Lloyd Wright: the Zane Experiment
by StoriesAreMagic
Summary: Lloyd Wright knows what it's like to be different. He and his mismatched "family" are unique, strange, special. On the plus side, they can do things no one else can. On the minus side, there are people who would stop at nothing to destroy them. You win some, you lose some. (A Maximum Ride AU that requires no knowledge of Maximum Ride to read.)
1. Chapter 1

**AN: All right, people, here's what's going on. I'm rewriting this story. I think I took a little too much from the Maximum Ride series and I want to remedy that, so I'm completely redoing it. Same Ninjago characters, same Maximum Ride plot, but now with 100% more original prose! I hope you all stick around for it. Enjoy!**

* * *

This was not how I thought my day was going to turn out. Then again, maybe I should've expected it, given how my days usually go.

C'mon, Lloyd! I berated myself. This isn't the time for thinking, this is the time for running for my life!

Yup. Running for my life. Again, not how I thought my day was going to turn out.

The sounds of the chase behind me got a little louder, like they were gaining on me. I didn't think I could run any faster, but I had to try. Pouring on the speed, I raced forward, stumbling over rocks and tree roots and incredibly pointy sticks. If I could have chosen, I wouldn't have picked a forest as the place to run for my life. Then again, if I could have chosen, I wouldn't have picked running for my life at all.

My lungs were aching, absolutely straining for air, and my heart pounded like it was going to burst, but I couldn't take a break, not even for a moment. From the hissing and snapping behind me, the Serpentine were still getting closer.

I hated Serpentine more than I hated almost anything else, except possibly getting the ending of the newest issue of my favorite comic book spoiled for me. The Serpentine were mutants, a mix of people and snakes and a little bit of pure evil thrown in there just for the fun of it. And they were chasing me, like they often did during some types of testing, but this time, the chase was real. I had escaped, and the scientists were not happy. Well, at least things couldn't get any worse than running for my life through a forest from the Serpentine.

My thoughts were broken by the sound of barking and howling. I shouldn't have thought that. Evidently things could get worse. Now I was running for my life through a forest from the Serpentine and a bunch of bloodthirsty dogs. I was faster than most Serpentine, all of us were even Zane, even though he was maybe six years old, but none of us were faster than a big dog.

The sounds were getting louder again. I tried to speed up, but I was going at my top speed. Then I realized that it seemed to be getting lighter through the trees up ahead. Was it a clearing? Was it some kind of open space? I desperately hoped so.

Still going as fast as I could go, I raced through the trees, bursting out into an open space.

But it wasn't a clearing.

It was the edge of a cliff.

Skidding to a stop just a foot's width from the edge, I stared out over the drop. It overlooked the rest of the forest, with birds chirping and flying all about, pretty much the ideal peaceful scene.

I felt the opposite of peaceful. The Serpentine and their dogs were getting closer, closer, ever closer behind me, and in front of me was a cliff dropping to a floor so far down I could barely see it. Neither option would work. It wasn't fair.

But fair wasn't a word where I came from.

I didn't have a choice. As the Serpentine came roaring through the edge of the trees, guns aiming to fire at me and dogs leaping to bite me, I did what I had to do. I jumped.

Then I opened my wings.

My whole wingspan spread out, more than twice as long as I was tall, all creamy yellow with golden bands edging certain feathers, and I began pumping them.

Rising slowly at first, then more quickly, I swept up the face of the cliff, up through the air, up past the confused dogs and angry Serpentine.

The Serpentine in front bared his fangs and aimed his gun at me. A little red light showed up on my torn-up shorts, the targeting system of the gun in action. Thinking quickly, I soared up and to the west so that the sun would shine directly into his eyes. He screeched in anger and began swinging his gun around, trying to aim at me again, but I was already too far away, laughing in sheer wild joy.

I had survived. I would always survive.


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: In case you didn't see the first rewritten chapter, basically I think I took a little too much from the Maximum Ride series and I want to remedy that, so I'm doing a rewrite. I hope you all stick around for it. Here's chapter two!**

* * *

My eyes popped open and I stared at the ceiling of my bedroom for a long moment, trying to get my breathing under control. Chill out, Lloyd. It was a dream, just a dream.

But it was my least favorite dream, and it never changed. I always ran away from the School, I always got chased by the Serpentine, and then I always escaped narrowly. Then I always woke up feeling like I'd run a marathon in my sleep.

I wanted to stay cozied up in bed, but as I glanced at my clock, I saw that it was time to get up. Forcing myself out from under the covers, I shivered as I changed out of my pajamas. Soon, clad in dark gray sweatpants, a dark green sleeveless shirt, and my favorite pale green sweatshirt, I made my way out of my bedroom and toward the kitchen. On the way there, I looked out the windows. The view never failed to thrill me, since given the way our house was built over the edge of a steep canyon, it looked like we were flying. Even better than that, I never saw even a hint at there being any other people around, because there were none. We were all alone, and for us, that meant we were safe, happy, free. And by "free," I meant "not in actual cages."

And then there was the best and also kind of the worst part: no adults. When we first started living here, Jeb Garmadon has been the only grown-up around. He'd been like a dad to me, to all of us. He'd taught us all sorts of cool things, he'd kept us fed and warm, and he'd saved us.

Then, two years ago, he'd just vanished. Gone. Poof. We all knew he was dead, but we never said it. We almost never said anything about him at all, like he'd never been there in the first place. We were all alone.

Most of the time, that felt like a good thing. There was nobody to tell us to do chores, to eat our vegetables, to stop watching TV and just go to bed, any of that. Well, except me and Cole. He's the oldest, so he automatically has a lot of influence. I'm the third oldest, at least approximately, but somehow I'm in charge overall. Probably because I'm the best fighter. I make sure we stay happy, healthy, and well-fed.

Speaking of being well-fed…

I searched through the whole kitchen, but there was barely anything in there, basically just some boxes of pasta, some cake mix, various canned goods, and a weirdly large amount of eggs. We were almost out of food.

When Garmadon was here, he'd pull wads of cash from seemingly nowhere and go to a different town every couple months to stock up. But now we have to get everything we need by ourselves. We do "grocery" runs at least once a week, digging out of nearby dumps and trash cans behind restaurants. You'd be surprised how much food is thrown away still in the package. There's a bunch of farms about fifteen to thirty miles (read: ten to twenty minutes) away where we can get fresh fruits and milk. It was definitely time for another grocery run.

Just as I finished checking over what all we still had for food, I heard a sudden sound just behind me.


	3. Chapter 3

**AN: Once more, if you didn't see it in the first chapter, I'm rewriting because I want to make the prose a little more different from the Maximum Ride series. Enjoy!**

* * *

I would've jumped at the sound if I hadn't registered it quickly as a yawn. Turning, I saw Kai slumping his way to the breakfast table. With his eyes half-closed, he ran right into his chair, then blinked at it for a moment before seating himself.

"Good morning," I told the sleepy nine-year-old.

"Mornin'," he grunted.

"What, no 'good,' Gasman?" I teased, using his far-too-accurate nickname.

Kai opened his eyes just wide enough to roll them at me. "Nothing good about mornings, Lloyd."

"Not true. What about watching the sun rise and getting an early start on the day?" I asked.

Kai groaned and dropped his head to rest it on the table.

"Fine, okay, what about breakfast?" I wondered.

Kai raised his head slightly. "It depends, what are we having?"

"We'll see," I said delicately.

"That means you don't know," Kai huffed, running a hand through his spiky hair.

"No, it means we'll see," I said again.

Kai perked up. "Can I pour drinks for everybody?"

"...Sure," I said slowly, and I watched him suspiciously as he got up to grab the cups. Kai normally isn't helpful unless he wants something out of it, but I had no idea what he could want this time. Maybe just something to do? I hoped so.

I looked through the kitchen again, coming to the conclusion that it would have to be eggs for breakfast. Nya was the one who was best at cooking breakfast-y stuff, so I waited for her to come and started setting the table.

As I put down the last plate, Cole appeared in the doorway, rubbing his shut eyes with one hand. Unlike Kai, he didn't bump into anything on his way to the table, but given the fact he's blind, it wasn't like it was any different for him to make his way around with his eyes closed rather than open.

"Hey!" Kai chirped from his spot filling glasses with water at the sink. "Cole, Lloyd doesn't know what to make for breakfast. Got any ideas?"

"I can make something," Cole offered, starting to stand.

"No!" Kai and I practically yelled.

Cole pouted. "I'm not that bad."

"You once set a bowl of cereal on fire. I'm not even sure how that's possible, and I set things on fire on a regular basis!" Kai exclaimed.

"Okay, but I'm only just learning," Cole countered weakly.

"I'd rather end breakfast with zero food poisoning, thank you," I told him.

"I'll make breakfast," Nya offered.

I hadn't seen her come in, but then again, I rarely did. She was sneaky like that.

"Morning, Nya!" Kai stated, bringing two of the full glasses of water over to the table.

"Morning, Kai," Nya said, reaching out and ruffling her little brother's already messy hair. Then she turned to Cole. "Did I hear you offer to make breakfast? Seriously?"

"I've already been scolded out of it by Kai and Lloyd, so you can leave it be," Cole sighed, waving a hand.

Nya nodded. "Fair enough. Lloyd, what've we got for breakfast?"

"He doesn't know," Kai piped up.

"Yes, I do. We'll have eggs," I said decisively.

"Okay, I'll get working on those," Nya agreed.

I surveyed the table, which was basically set except for the glasses Kai was still bringing over. "And I'll fetch Jay and Zane."

The two of them currently shared a bedroom. We switched around who got what room and who shared which one now and then, and it would be time to switch again soon, but for now, Jay and Zane were in the last bedroom at the end of the hall.

I peered in to see Jay still completely out of it. Even in his sleep, he was making noise constantly, muttering indistinctly under his breath. I went to him and shook his shoulder. "Hey. Hey, runt. Rise and shine, or even just rise."

Jay's eyelids fluttered, and his eyes focused on me for a moment before he closed them again.

"Jay. Jay. Jayyyy," I said in a sing-songy voice, poking his cheek. "C'mon, Jay. Time for breakfast. Jayyyyy. I'm not leaving until you get up."

He groaned and opened his eyes again. "I don't wanna."

"You gotta," I said unsympathetically.

"But I don't wanna," Jay insisted. Nonetheless, he sat up and scooted to the edge of the bed. Heaving a deep breath, he stood and stumbled out of the room, leaning against the wall the whole way.

I laughed under my breath and turned to the other side of the room, what we all jokingly called Zane's little nest. Concealed by a curtain, his bed was covered in blankets, stuffed animals, and lots and lots of books. I pulled back the curtain and noted with a smile, "You're already dressed?"

"Yes," Zane agreed, looking up from the book he was looking through. "Is it time for breakfast already?"

"Uh-huh," I answered. "If you hurry, you can get to the kitchen in time to help Nya make the eggs."

Zane smiled. "I would greatly enjoy that."

Of course he would. Zane loved cooking, but because he was so young, we didn't let him do it alone very often.

"You do not let me do it alone at all," Zane corrected, reading my mind. Literally. As in, he heard my thoughts. That was just something he did sometimes.

I shrugged. "What can I say, we're a little protective of you. You're the baby of the group, after all. We won't let anything happen to you."

Zane smiled. "I know. I trust you."


	4. Chapter 4

"Could we go pick strawberries after breakfast?" Zane asked over the sounds of chewing and swallowing and forks clinking against plates. "I believe they should be ripe by now."

"We should totally do that," Kai agreed. Then he smirked. Never a good sign.

"What's that look on your face for?" I asked suspiciously.

Kai arranged his face to look as innocent as possible. "What? I'm not doing anything."

That's when I smelled it. My nose wrinkled automatically. "Kai! Gross!"

"I'm not doing anything, because I already did something," Kai gloated with all the pride of an unashamed nine-year-old as the rest of us gagged and plugged our noses.

"We should all go pick strawberries," Nya said bluntly. "You know, so we're not in an enclosed space with my little brother, his messed-up digestive system, and all the gas they produce."

"Yup, let's all go," I said, trying to sound firm, but it came out incredibly nasally since I was clamping my nose shut with one hand.

As soon as we finished eating, we grabbed whatever buckets and baskets we could find and headed out, leaving the breakfast dishes still on the table to be cleaned up later. Like I said, there weren't any adults to tell us otherwise, so sometimes we let messes be for a little while.

We stepped out into a sunny day. Now, I wasn't the type to gush over the weather, but with the sky bright blue with just a few wisps of cloud and the air fresh and gently breezy, it felt like the perfect day to me.

We followed Zane as he showed us the way to a big wild-strawberry-filled clearing in the mountain's forest. Swinging his bucket, he remarked happily, "I read a recipe for strawberry shortcake the other day. Do you think we could make it?"

"I can try," Cole offered.

"Yeah, if we want the house to explode," I heard my own voice scoff, and then continue, "Nya and I can make the shortcake, Zane."

"Hey!" Cole objected. "Take that back, Lloyd, I wouldn't-"

"It wasn't me," I interrupted, shooting a glare at Kai.

He laughed, completely unabashed. "It was me, Cole."

"Should've known," Cole grumbled, but he was smiling as Jay and Zane started to laugh. "Your mimicking gets harder and harder to tell from the real thing, Gasman."

It was true. Kai had always had a knack for imitating all sorts of sounds, most of all voices, and lately he was almost perfect at it. I couldn't count all the times any of us had fought, sometimes physically, at things Kai has said as if he were each of us, especially Cole and Jay. It was his own little weird ability, like Zane's mind-reading and Jay's rambling for multiple minutes without taking a break to breathe. We didn't know what these abilities were, exactly, but they certainly kept us on our toes.

In front of me, Zane froze in place. He started looking around wildly, left, right, forward, backward, just looking all around.

"Zane?" I asked in confusion, coming up beside him.

"We need to leave," he whispered.

I blinked. "What? You're the one who wanted to come pick-"

"We need to leave," Zane repeated loudly, almost screaming and getting everyone else's attention. "I hear them, I hear their thoughts, we need to-"

That's when the first man raced out from among the trees, followed by a whole, whole, whole lot of others, each with the same scaly face and huge fangs. I recognized them instantly. They were Serpentine. And this time, I wasn't dreaming.


	5. Chapter 5

I didn't stop to think about why they were here. There wasn't time to think, and besides, Jeb Garmadon had trained us well. We were to fight first, ask questions later. I ran at the nearest Serpentine, twisting in midair to plant the hardest kick I could muster right in the middle of his chest. He grunted and stumbled backward, heaving for breath, but I didn't stop. I aimed a punch at the flattened double-slits he had in place of a nose and connected solidly, knocking him right to the ground. I didn't stop then either, just turned and sped for the next Serpentine.

Soon, it was all a blur of fists and feet and elbows and knees, headbutting and spinning and stomping and hollering, image after image snapshotted like a movie montage.

There I was, landing a blow on the next Serpentine, and there he was, landing one back on me, right in the side of the face.

There was Nya, up against a pair of Serpentine, her face twisted in rage and her fists moving faster than I thought was possible.

There was Cole, arms bulging as he lifted a Serpentine clear off of the ground and tossed him into the trees.

There was Kai, lying curled-up on the ground, face in the dirt as three Serpentine kicked at him.

Wait, what?

I refocused, pushing the Serpentine I was currently fighting away from me and heading for Kai. Halfway there, another Serpentine jumped at me, knocking me to the ground. The Serpentine who had jumped at me now grabbed me, pulling me up onto my feet. He forced my hands behind my back and twisted me around to face a new Serpentine, who bared his fangs at me in a savage excuse for a grin before punching me in the gut.

I wheezed and fell the ground of the meadow, my face landing on and squishing an over-ripe strawberry. Faintly, I could hear the battle still going on around me, shouts, screams, squeals of pain, but it was like I was underwater, or maybe far away.

Forcing myself to stagger up off the ground, I elbowed and kicked and shoved the two Serpentine away and glanced around wildly.

There was Kai, back on his feet again, jumping on the back of a Serpentine and pounding on the back of the Serpentine's head until he and the Serpentine both tumbled to the ground.

There was Jay, and there was Nya, and there was Cole, the three of them standing back-to-back-to-back in a rough triangle, fending off a whole slew of Serpentine.

Where was Zane?

A shrill cry of terror reached my ears through the fog of the noisy fight and I whirled. There was Zane! Four Serpentine were crowded around him, each with a hand around one of his ankles or wrists, and they were pulling him toward a fifth Serpentine, this one pulling something out from behind his own back.

I ran for Zane, leaping over an unconscious Serpentine, but two more Serpentine, these ones obviously fully conscious, blocked my path and lay into me, smacking me back and forth between the two of them.

I staggered back, trying to see beyond them. The four Serpentine had made it to the fifth one with Zane in tow, and the fifth one was now holding a large sack. Zane was still struggling, freeing a hand and landing a few blows, but the Serpentine with the sack punched him in the back of the head. Zane went limp, probably just shocked or unconscious. Probably.

Crying out what was meant to be a fierce battle whoop but what came out as a hoarse half-choked shout, I surged forward, trying to make it past the wall of Serpentine that was forming between me and Zane, but they forced me to the ground. One of them sat on my legs, another two pinned my arms between them, and a fourth crouched next to me.

I spat at him.

The Serpentine smiled, dodging my bloody spit easily. This Serpentine was different from the others, some dim part of my brain put together. His fangs were sharper, his scales were smaller, and his eyes were smaller and less red. Wait. His? Not "his," I realized, but "her." This Serpentine was a girl.

"Hello, Lloyd," she practically purred.

She knew my name.

I didn't know hers.

"Niccce to sssee you," she went on, her "s" sounds extended in that hissy way the Serpentine had. "Well, niccce for me, not ssso much for you. You look terrible. That'sss also niccce for me, not ssso niccce for you. You alwaysss played at being ssso above it all, ssso much better than me and everyone elssse. Thisss is a much better look for you."

I squinted at her. Did I know her? I couldn't, could I?

"What, don't you remember me?" She wondered, voice dripping with false sweetness. "That'sss fine. Becaussse I remember you, Lloyd Wright."

My jaw dropped as my tired, beat-up brain finally put the pieces together. Actually, I did remember her.

"Skylor?" I asked hoarsely.

She screeched with cruel laughter as she stood and crowed, "That'sss right!

Her booted foot came hurtling toward my head, and as it connected and I dropped out of consciousness, my last thoughts were ones of horror.

Skylor was the daughter of Chen, one of the head whitecoats and the brother of Jeb Garmadon. They had turned her into a Serpentine, a huge bloodthirsty mutant. Today, she would be barely nine years old.


	6. Chapter 6

As I struggled back to consciousness, I could hear someone groaning in pain. Oh wait. That someone was me. I closed my mouth and opened my eyes.

Kai and Nya were peering down at me, faces twisted in concern around steadily-blackening eyes and bleeding split lips.

"Hey," I tried to whisper, but it came out hoarse and croaky. I cleared my throat and tried again, my first thoughts ones of concern for how they looked. "Hey. How is everybody?"

"Banged and bruised, but we'll live," Nya answered. She held out a hand and helped me up, continuing as I stood, "Not sure if Zane will if we don't get him back, though."

That's when all memories of this morning returned: waking up, going to pick strawberries, the Serpentine, the fight, Skylor, then darkness. I felt like I was going to drop right back down to the ground and black out again. They had Zane.

The Serpentine were ruthless, savage, and ferocious, and the whitecoats they reported to were even more so. Unbidden, a memory rose to the front of my mind of being maybe eight years old and watching the Serpentine train in the courtyard, watching them beat each other up for the slightest provocation, watching them learn not to value life but to value their own bloodlust and to value, above all, their orders.

I didn't know what their orders were now, but those orders at least extended to kidnapping Zane, and that wasn't something any of us were going to stand for.

Woozy from pain but steadying myself on Nya's shoulder momentarily, I looked around at my family. They were all beat up and bloodied, but we couldn't wait to get better. We didn't have the time. The clock was ticking on how long Zane could survive, tick tock, tick tock. Standing up straight on my own now, I stated, "We've got to go after them. We've got to get Zane back. Everybody ready?"

"Ready," Jay said shortly, for once not rambling on.

"Ready," Kai echoed, raising his chin.

"I'm up for it," Nya agreed.

"Me too," Cole added.

We were beat up, but not beaten down. We would fight on. We would never quit.

Tears of pain and pride flooded my eyes. Swiping them away, I resolved not to break. I couldn't afford to do so. Zane couldn't afford for me to do so.

That's when Cole tilted his head to one side. "Guys?"

I put a finger over my lips, waving my other hand for everyone to be silent and listen. After a moment of tense silence, I picked up on a quiet sound.

"That way!" Cole directed with a pointed finger.

We raced toward what we could just barely hear, and as we went, it became more audible, clearly becoming the sound of a muffled engine. We ran through the forest, coming to a steep cliff far overlooking a grown-over former road. I watched the road tersely, hoping against hope that the sound would come this way.

Then it did. A dirty, banged-up van came into view, rattling over the bumpy road. My heart sped up in my chest. Zane was in that van. He had to be. He was in that van, and he was on his way to our worst nightmare.

I couldn't allow that to happen. I wouldn't allow that to happen.

"Let's move," I ordered, backing away from the edge of the cliff. The others did the same, getting behind me. Starting toward the cliff edge, I picked up speed, going faster and faster.

Then, as I reached the edge of the cliff, I jumped.

I went over the cliff edge.

I began falling.

Then, I opened my wings and started flying.


	7. Chapter 7

My dream from the night before hadn't been too far from reality, unfortunately. The six of us, my family and I, we were created in a lab in a place called the School by scientists we called the whitecoats. They had altered us, changed us, made us part person and part bird. Jeb Garmadon had been one of the whitecoats, but he'd had a change of heart, a real moral awakening, and had snuck us out and away, never to return to the whitecoats and the School.

Or so we had hoped we would never return. Now Zane was on his way back to those horrible people and that horrible place.

I couldn't let that happen.

My wings beat strongly, up and down, up and down, and I swooped forward, flying toward the van. Peeking back at the cliff's edge briefly, I saw that Jay had jumped after me, then Cole, then Kai, then Nya. They followed me forward. We flew together as the flock of birdkids we were, close enough together to look after each other but far enough apart to have room for our wings.

I began to move down toward the van, and they all followed. Thinking quickly, Nya hovered for a moment by a dying tree and grabbed a large branch off of it. She rejoined us, speeding past me to swerve to the van's front and bang the branch into the van's windshield.

The windshield gave a loud cracking sound and the van veered to the left. The passenger window rolled down and to my horror, the barrel of a gun emerged. Nya didn't seem to see it. She was too busy hauling her branch back and banging it against the windshield again.

"Nya!" I screamed. "Watch out!"

Nya banged the branch against the windshield a third time as she looked around. I could see the moment she spotted the gun barrel turning to aim at her. Her eyes went wide and she dropped the branch, flying up and away just as the gun starting spraying bullets. Nya came up to fly beside me.

"Guns," she called out, making sure everyone knew what had just happened. "That's a bit of a problem."

I managed a wry half-smile at her under-exaggeration before I had to swerve as the gun barrel turned to aim at us. "Everyone, move! Up, now!"

We shot up into the sky, hopefully out of shooting range or at least decent aiming range.

"There!" I yelled, looking forward and spotting a clearing. Between the thick lining of trees, I could just make out a massive helicopter. "They'll have to move Zane from the van to the helicopter. That'll be our chance!"

When the van screeched to a stop in the clearing, we dropped from the sky and stood between it and the helicopter. Serpentine after Serpentine jumped out from the van, and more of them vaulted into the clearing from inside the helicopter. We were outnumbered and surrounded.

We still would never quit.

The Serpentine from the van raced forward, bowling us over, not even trying to fight but just forcing us aside as they ran for the helicopter. The helicopter Serpentine fought some, but they also tried to push us aside to the edges of the clearing.

"Don't let them distract you!" I called. "Know why we're here!"

"Zane!" Jay screamed, trying to get close to the van but being forced back. "It's us! We'll get you out! We'll save you!"

A Serpentine shoved him back, sending him sprawling to the ground.

All around me, the other birdkids were trying to get to the van, but the Serpentine were pushing them away. I was also being forced away from the van. There wasn't anything I could do.

Or was there?

I let the Serpentine in front of me push back from the van, but as soon as he did so, I ran for the helicopter. Dodging Serpentine after Serpentine to make it there, I pivoted and looked toward the van.

At that moment, Skylor rushed out from the van, a big sack over her shoulder. Zane!

Skylor ran for the helicopter, but I stood in her way. She scowled at me, hollering, "Move!"

"Not a chance," I said breathlessly, putting up my fists.

Skylor laughed and stated, "Then we'll have to make you."

Someone grabbed me from behind by the waist and heaved me up and away. I went crashing across almost the whole clearing, but I scrambled to my feet and headed for the helicopter again.

In the time it had taken me to get up and get going, Skylor had leapt into the helicopter, taking the sack with Zane in it with her. The helicopter blades were spinning, getting ready to take off, and the Serpentine were clambering in.

Nya, Cole, Jay, and Kai were shouting from behind me, yelling threats to the Serpentine and encouragement to me as they came running now that the Serpentine were no longer forcing them back. The four of them joined me, and together we ran in a rough line toward the helicopter with me leading the charge.

All the Serpentine on board and the doors starting to close, the helicopter's blades went faster as it prepared to take off. If it got in the air, there would be no stopping it. Its blades would spin so fast we wouldn't be able to fly up to it, and it would move so quickly and steadily we wouldn't be able to keep up. This was our last chance.

I reached the helicopter as it started to lift off the ground. Prying at the closing door, I managed to hold it open, jumping onto the skids and trying to get on board as the helicopter slowly rose.

But there was Skylor, and she was no longer holding the sack with Zane in it, although I could see it slumped against the wall. Instead, she was holding a gun.

I froze.

"Go ahead, Lloyd," Skylor mocked, tilting the gun at me. "Come on in. Try your luck. But do it knowing thisss: you're fighting for the wrong ssside. Me? I'm one of the good guysss. But that won't ssstop me from shooting you."

Her tone was firm, and her words left no doubt. She wouldn't hesitate. And a dead Lloyd was a useless Lloyd, unable to save anyone.

Tears spilling from my eyes, I jumped back from the helicopter, still watching its inhabitants as I fell away. My last glimpse was of the sack against the wall shaking and Zane's small head popping out of it, his eyes wide in fear.

There he went, flying not under his own power but in the clutches of the bad guys. There he went, on his way and not by his choice. There he went, toward all of our worst nightmare.

I only wished this was a nightmare as well.


	8. Chapter 8

I have eyes like a hawk, quite literally given the whitecoats' experiments. Normally it's a great help. But then, watching the helicopter fly away, I wished my eyes were normal just so I wouldn't have to watch it take Zane away for so long. Tears pricked at my eyes and my chest was so tight breathing felt impossible, but I watched the helicopter until it faded into the far distance.

As the helicopter disappeared from view, the rest of the world reappeared in my view. I had been so focused on watching the helicopter that everything else had been basically non-existent, but now I had no choice but to re-enter the world. I turned to survey the damage.

Kai was sitting on the ground, knees tucked to his chest and arms tucked around his knees, sobbing his heart out. He played at being tough, but it was just that, play. He was a kid, only a kid. Just like Zane.

Nya knelt beside Kai, a hand resting on his arm, but he was too busy crying to notice. She looked close to tears herself, but she was holding it together. How was she holding it together?

Jay was mumbling to himself, eyes wide and hands clutching either side of his face, "But we were going to save him. We didn't save him, why didn't we save him?"

"We couldn't," Cole said hollowly, interrupting Jay. "We weren't strong enough."

We weren't strong enough. No, I wasn't strong enough. I had no one but myself to blame. I was the leader, I was supposed to look after everyone, I was supposed to save us all. But I hadn't.

"We weren't strong enough? But we had to be! We had to save him!" Jay argued tearfully.

"But we didn't. We failed," Cole stated. He shook his head and repeated, "We failed."

I failed.

At that thought, I couldn't hold it together anymore. But I couldn't let the others see me fail apart, I wouldn't let them see me fail apart. I was the leader, I had to be strong.

Snapping my wings out and open, I took off, hollering back to the others, "Meet me at home!"

Despite my words, I headed in the opposite direction of our house. I had to fly, had to think, had to work this out.

I flew hard and fast, flapping my wings, getting out of sight and out of hearing range as quickly as I could. As soon as I was far enough away that no one could see or hear me, I landed. Well, more like crash-landed, skidding along the ground and falling to my knees. I was already too angry and sad to care, though.

Turning my face to the sky, I screamed a long, wordless scream, letting out all the pain and the fear and the rage. Why couldn't I have done it? Why hadn't I saved him? Why had I failed?!

I had failed, I had failed, I had failed. And now Zane was doomed.

The tears that had been pushing at my eyes for so long finally started to fall. I let them do so. They poured down my face, stinging on the scrapes along my cheeks, and finally fell off my chin to the ground. I watched the tears plop onto the forest floor and, gasping out sobs, thought over the battle, both battles. What could I have done? There had to have been something I could have done. I could have been faster, stronger, better. I should have been better. Now, I would have to face the consequences. I would have to face the remainder of my family with the knowledge that I had failed.

The tears slowly stopped coming. I swiped at my eyes, clearing away the evidence that I had broken down as best I could. The rest of my family would need me now. I had to go home and be brave for them. I had to go pull us back together and pull together a plan.

That decided, I spread my wings and took off for home, thoughts of the fights still surging through my head. One thought in particular rang in my brain over and over as I headed for home, specifically one of Skylor's parting verbal shots.

You're fighting for the wrong side.


	9. Chapter 9

Later, I would never be able to recall exactly how I got home. I presumed I flew there without any trouble, but I couldn't remember it in the slightest. The next thing I knew after taking off from the forest floor, I was walking in the front door of our house, looking around to make sure everyone was there who was supposed to be there.

Well. Everyone except Zane.

Nya was sitting at the breakfast table, staring blankly at the plates and cups that still sat there. I noticed instantly that she wasn't in her usual spot. Instead, she sat where Zane always did.

Kai and Jay were curled up on opposite ends of the couch. Kai had his face buried in his hands, and I could hear him hiccup every now and then, literally. He was so worn out from crying that he'd given himself the hiccups. Jay had his arms wrapped around himself and, for once, not a word escaped his mouth. His lips were pressed together firmly, but his chin trembled, like he was trying not to sob.

Cole was leaned against the wall looking absolutely exhausted. He turned a little toward the sound of my footsteps as I entered but he didn't say a word.

I didn't say anything either. Instead, I went searching for the first aid kit. Eventually, I found it in a cupboard in the laundry room. Returning to the others, I started dispensing bandages and ointment, moist towelettes and painkillers. We fixed ourselves up in a terse silence that was only broken by the occasional grunt of pain from cleaning a particularly nasty wound.

Jay, of course, was the one who finally spoke as I put the remainder of the first aid supplies back in the kit. "What do we do now? We need, we need a plan or something. We can't just let them take Zane."

"We already did," Cole pointed out unhelpfully.

Before Jay could turn on him, I interjected quickly, "We didn't let them take Zane. We fought hard, and we fought well. But this time, that wasn't enough. So we'll have to do better next time."

"Next time?" Kai repeated, raising his face from his hands.

"Yeah. We're not giving up. The Flock are not quitters," I said firmly.

"So what do we do?" Jay asked again. "I mean, the helicopter is gone. We don't know where it went. We can't track it or anything."

Kai sat up straight. "Or can't we track it? Jay, you made a metal-detector two weeks ago, didn't you?"

"A faulty one," Jay grumbled. "It kept going off whenever Zane was around."

"Yeah, it was kinda messed up, but it still detected most metals. Could you somehow, uh, make it work on looking for big things like helicopters?" Kai asked.

Jay considered that for a moment, then he shook his head. "I don't think so, and even if I did, there'd be no way to figure out which helicopter we'd be looking for."

"Then can you make the metal detector look for Zane specifically? It did always go off whenever he was near it," Kai pointed out.

"I don't think that would work either," Jay said glumly. "The distance is way too big, and we don't have a clue where they would go to start us off with."

I coughed. "Um, actually, there's a good chance we know where they're going."

Cole nodded, and Nya winced. They knew what I was talking about.

Jay and Kai, on the other hand, didn't. Kai furrowed his eyebrows at me, and Jay wondered, "What? How could we know where they'd go?"

"They're going back to the same place they came from," I said grimly.

Jay gasped in horror, and Kai's eyes went wide as he asked, "You don't mean-"

"The School," Cole, Nya, and I said together.


	10. Chapter 10

"The School?" Jay repeated, voice wavering. "You all think the Serpentine took Zane back to the School?"

"It's the only thing that would make sense," I explained. "Why else would they come after us?"

"But we've been out of the School for years," Kai stated.

"Yeah, why would they try to get us now?" Jay wondered.

I shrugged. "Maybe it took them that long to find us. After all, Garmadon was really sneaky about stealing us away from the School. Maybe the whitecoats didn't know where we were until just recently. Maybe they just figured out where we are and finally came after us."

"But then why didn't they take all of us?" Kai asked.

"Maybe the whitecoats didn't know if the Serpentine would be able to capture all of us," I offered.

"So why-" Jay began.

"Look, Lloyd isn't a whitecoat, so he doesn't know exactly why any of this is happening the way it is," Cole interrupted. "None of us do. We're just trying to make as much sense of it as possible, and like Lloyd said, the only way this makes sense is if the whitecoats want us in the School again. The Serpentine must have been sent to bring at least one of us back."

"And they succeeded," Nya said grimly.

We all fell silent for a moment then. I was trying and failing not to think of Zane, on his own, back at the School, stuck in a cage, surrounded by whitecoats with evil plans. I guessed the others were trying not to think of the same thing.

Shaking off the horrible thoughts, I cleared my throat. "Yeah, they succeeded. For now. We don't have to give up. Actually, we have to not give up."

"But what can we do?" Kai wondered.

Nya stood and walked out of the room, calling over her shoulder, "Be right back."

Kai stared after her, then he turned to me and gave me a confused look.

"We do the only thing we can do," I stated. "We fight."

"How do we fight? The Serpentine are gone," Jay said mournfully. "It's not like we can follow them."

"Actually, if I know what Nya's going to get, it's exactly like that," Cole offered.

Jay frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that, just like the Serpentine brought the fight to us, we're going to bring the fight back to the Serpentine," I explained as Nya came back into the room holding a stack of papers. She headed for the kitchen table, pushing aside the breakfast dishes to spread the papers on the table.

I stood and went to her, Cole, Kai, and Jay hot on my heels.

"What's all this?" Jay asked, picking up a paper and frowning at it. "Wait, is this the stuff from Jeb Garmadon's office? The stuff we packed up after he disappeared?"

"It's that stuff, yeah," Nya agreed, sifting through the papers and pulling a specific one out. "More than that, though, it's the stuff that's going to help us get Zane back."

Kai's eyes went wide. "These papers can do that?"

"Yeah," Nya stated. "Check this one out."

Kai peered at the paper in his sister's hands. "It's a… Map? Of a building?"

"Of a very specific building," I said, my stomach rolling with fear and anticipation. "A certain secret facility. The School."


	11. Chapter 11

Kai gulped hard. "A map of the School?"

"Ooooh," Jay said, catching on. "We need to get Zane back, because they're going to do awful things to him, so we need to get him back, and to do that, we're going to go break into the School, and we're going to get Zane out, and so we need these papers so we know where we need to go, and once we know where we need to go, we can get going, so we better-"

"Breathe, Jay," I told him. "Take a break to breathe."

Jay paused, took a deep breath, and asked, "How far away is the School?"

"About a seven hour flight," Nya answered, now peering at a different map. "Maybe eight, plus some time for breaks."

"Breaks are good," Kai offered weakly. "If we're all going to do this, breaks are a good idea."

I hesitated before speaking, a little unsure of myself. But I had to be sure of myself. This was the best way forward. "Actually, 'we' aren't all going to do this. Just Jay, Nya, and I are going to go rescue Zane."

Cole, who had been leaning against the wall by the table, straightened up. "What?"

"Jay, Nya, and I are going to go rescue Zane. Cole, you and Kai are staying here. If Zane somehow gets free on his own, he's going to come back here, and I need someone to be here just in case," I explained, hoping they would buy it.

They didn't buy it.

"That's a lie," Cole accused, crossing his arms. "You don't think you'll need us here at all. Why don't you just come out with it and say what you really mean?"

I sighed. "Okay, fine. What I mean is, you're blind, Cole."

"Really? I hadn't noticed," Cole snapped with a scowl.

I ignored his biting anger and barged forward. "You're great at navigating here at home where you know where everything is, but we're not going to be in places where you know where everything is. We're going to be in new territory, and I can't be sure you'll be able to handle it."

Okay, that came out a little harsher than I had intended, given the way Cole's scowl deepened, but it got the message across and right now, that was what mattered most.

"But why can't I come?" Kai piped up. "I can't just sit around and do nothing when Zane's captured. He's our little brother!"

"That's right. He's the youngest. And you're second youngest. And if they decided they want him back, maybe they'll want you back just as much," I said. "Not to mention, again, you're second youngest. You get tired quicker than the rest of us, and we're going to be flying for hours on end. You need to stay here."

"'You need to stay here,'" Kai mimicked angrily. "No way!"

"Yes way. I'm in charge, and I say you're staying, so you're staying," I said.

"If Garmadon was here, he wouldn't make us stay," Cole shot back.

Garmadon was my weak point, and Cole knew it. I took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then let it out, saying, "Maybe he wouldn't have made you stay. Maybe he would have. We don't know, because he's gone. But I'm still here, and I'm in charge, so what I say goes. So, Jay, Nya, let's get packed."


	12. Chapter 12

"You both remember our back-up plan?" I checked, speaking at almost a yell so my voice would be audible to Jay and Nya over the rush of air going past us. We were in the sky, wings flapping and flexing powerfully, sending us toward the School.

"I do, but I'm confused," Jay confessed, flying a little closer to me.

I frowned. I had gone over it twice while we were still at home and twice more while we were flying. Had Jay not been paying attention? "Well, I can go over it again. If we get split up, then we meet up at the south side of the Caves of Despair. The School is close enough to there that it should be easy to get to, but not so close we'd have to be worried about being spotted."

Jay shook his head. "That's not what I'm confused about. I'm confused why we need a Plan B. How would we get split up? We're flying all together, and we're going to keep flying together, right? How would we lose each other? I mean, unless maybe a whole bunch of regular birds flew by and one of us got caught up in their flock and got lost that way or something."

"I don't think that would happen," Nya said with a small smile.

"I don't think we're going to get split up, but it's good to be prepared," I said patiently. "We have to be sure we have a way to get back together in case something happens."

"Something like what?" Jay asked.

I didn't know, but I wasn't going to tell him that. "Like something unexpected."

Jay thought about that for a minute, then he nodded. "Okay, I see."

We flew in silence for a few moments, all enjoying the sun on our faces and the fresh air blowing past our wings. Well, I knew I was enjoying it, at least as much as was possible. It was hard, though. I was trying not to think about how angry Cole and Kai had been when we left, trying not to think about how much danger Zane could be in at that very moment, trying not to think about the fact that we would have to stop to rest and eat probably multiple times before we could get to him, trying not to think how hard this could be.

"This is nice," Jay sighed. So he was enjoying it too, I gathered. "Flying is super cool. Feeling the wind in my hair, seeing everything around us for miles and miles, everything like that. Some things about being a birdkid are awesome."

"And some things are less awesome, like living in fear of evil scientists and awful snake-people, and also being total freaks who won't ever get to live normally," Nya pointed out.

"Well, you win some, you lose some," Jay said cheerily. "The power of positive thinking, people! And who said we'll never get to live normally?"

"I say it," I volunteered. "We've got wings, we've got hollow bones, we've got weird lungs and weird hearts and weird pretty much everything. We don't have parents, we don't have teachers, we don't have neighbors, we don't have normal lives, and I'm pretty sure we never will."

Jay coughed. "Uh, I might have something that would help with one of those things."

Looking over at him in confusion, I asked, "What do you mean?"

"I looked through all the papers when you and Nya were still packing. All of Garmadon's papers, I mean. I was just curious, you know? And some of them had our names on them, and one of those had my name on it, and some other names too, with the name of this town. I looked the town up and it's in the Sea of Sand, kind of near the School, so we're sort of heading toward it. It's a really little town, easy to find someone in," Jay said all in a rush. "And I was thinking about how we don't know anything about our parents, about where we came from, and I always wondered how we came to be at the School and whether our parents even knew what happened to us, and I was wondering if-"

"Jay," I cut him off quickly before he could ask what I thought he was going to ask.

"What?" Jay asked fake-innocently.

I sighed. "I get it. You want to know about your past, your parents, everything like that. I feel the same way. But those names? They probably had nothing to do with you. We probably didn't even have real parents; after all, the whitecoats always talked like we'd been made in their lab. So it's not worth thinking about, okay? We need to concentrate on getting Zane back."

Silence met that statement, nothing but the sound of the wind and the sounds of our wings beating in sync. Nya glanced between Jay and I worriedly, making a concerned face.

"Jay?" I asked.

"Yeah, right, yeah, of course," Jay said quickly. "I get it. I'll concentrate. I totally get it."

I didn't think he got it. In fact, I thought this whole conversation was going to come back to haunt me. But at least he was going to concentrate, and that was a positive. Like Jay himself had said just a little while before, you win some, you lose some.


	13. Chapter 13

Zane's eyes fluttered open. He peered up at the ceiling, no, not at the ceiling, he realized quickly. It was far too close to him for that. He was staring at the roof of a dog crate that he was enclosed in.

As quickly as he could, Zane forced himself to sit up and check his surroundings. Yes, he was in a dog crate, a cramped plastic cage. He could sense many different thoughts around him, most of them a ways away. The smell of disinfectants infiltrated his nose, and Zane winced. Between the cage, the numerous minds surrounding him, and the disinfectant smell, it was clear what had happened.

Zane had been taken to the School.

The urge to simply sit there and start crying was overwhelming, but Zane wouldn't let it get the best of him. He had to be brave. What if his family was here too? What if they'd all been captured? He had to know. The more he knew about his situation, the better off he would be, Zane rationalized.

Peering out between the wires that made up the door of the crate, Zane looked around. He didn't see any of the others, and he didn't sense their minds. Either they were somewhere in a far-off part of the School, or they hadn't been captured. Zane really hoped it was the latter since he couldn't see any of them.

No, he didn't see any of the others, but Zane did see two kids in a cage much like his own. As he locked eyes with them, their thoughts washed over him.

\- New boy new boy new new wings and strange new boy -

"Greetings," Zane whispered to them.

The two kids didn't say anything, but their thoughts pushed at Zane's mind.

\- Sounds sounds new sounds and new wings and new new boy -

Zane looked more closely at the two kids, both boys as far as he could tell. One of them had a nose and mouth that jutted out from his face, kind of like a dog's snout, and he had bits and tufts of fur in patches all over his skinny body. The other just looked in pain. His hands were crowded with too many fingers, and his feet with too many toes. His head was set squarely in his shoulders without any evidence of a neck, and he hadn't a hair on him, not even eyebrows. Raised scars covered his body. Zane's heart ached at the thought of these two kids, just about his age, alone in the School.

Well. Not alone, worse than alone. They'd had the whitecoats for company.

Speaking of the whitecoats, over the sensation of the two kids' thoughts, Zane could feel two minds coming close to the room he was in. He concentrated, trying to sense what those two minds were thinking, but the kids in the room with him were thinking too loudly.

\- Strange new boy strange wings new new new -

The sound of a door opening hit Zane's ears, and he watched as the two kids cringed back from the door to their cage. Their terrified thoughts whirled around and around in Zane's mind, making it hard to think for himself.

\- Bad bad mean bad mean bad hurts hurts bad -

Footsteps made their way across the room, and two pairs of legs surrounded by the edges of white lab coats appeared in front of Zane's crate door. The whitecoat on the left leaned down, staring into Zane's crate with a fascination that verged on hunger.

"Oh man, I can't believe it," he breathed. "They actually got it back! Do you know how long I've waited to experiment on this one? The Director's reports on this group of recombinants is just thrilling, and this one in particular is something else entirely. I almost can't believe it!"

"I'm not sure I do believe it," the other whitecoat noted, her voice filled with uncertainty. She leaned down too, peering at Zane, who pressed himself almost unconsciously against the back of the crate. The whitecoat continued dubiously, "You're saying this little boy is Subject Avian-Binary?"

"The one and only," the first whitecoat crowed, leaning forward and unlatching the crate door. "Let's get going, we've got to take it to lab six."

Zane huddled against the back of his cage, but the whitecoat simply reached in and began dragging him out.

As he was picked up and carried out of the room, Zane felt the relief of the two other kids wash over them. They were almost happy it was he who was being taken out, he who was being carried away, he who was going to be experimented on right now. They were happy it wasn't them.

To be honest, Zane couldn't really blame them for being relieved and a little happy. He was being brought to a surely horrible fate, and they weren't. No, he couldn't blame them in the slightest.


	14. Chapter 14

"I'm hungry," Jay said for about the fourteenth time in about as many minutes.

I sighed. "I know, Jay."

"My stomach hurts," Jay put forward.

"I know, Jay," I said.

"I want food," Jay continued.

"I know, Jay," I stated.

"No, I don't want food, I need food," Jay added.

"I know, Jay," I said as patiently as I could manage, which wasn't very patiently at all.

"We're all hungry," Nya chimed in. "Lloyd just wants to get a little farther before taking a break to rest and refuel."

"We are a little farther," Jay pointed out. "We're farther than when I mentioned it last time. And we can't fly as well on empty stomachs."

I had to admit, he had a point. My stomach had been clenching distractingly in need for at least half an hour. There was nothing like flying to burn an incredible amount of calories incredibly fast.

"I guess we're far enough along that a break would be helpful," I decided.

Jay whooped with glee, and Nya smiled.

Now I just needed to find us a good place to rest. I looked down at the mountainous ground far below us, focusing my hawk-like eyesight on various objects, a pile of rocks, a large pine tree, a smattering of houses. We'd have to stay away from the latter.

Eventually, I found a clearing quite a ways away from the houses, with no roads weaving anywhere near it.

"Clearing ahead and to the left," I called to Jay and Nya, already angling my wings to head downwards. They followed my lead, and soon we were landing in the clearing. My legs felt like they were made of jelly after flying for so long, and I almost collapsed as I touched down, but I managed to control myself enough to stay standing. I folded up my wings as I sat, feeling their warmth and slight soreness from the lengthy flight.

"All right, all right, let's see what we've got," Jay stated eagerly, carefully folding his wings so he could get his backpack off. He dug through the bag, pulling out bits and pieces of food that we'd managed to scrounge up to take with. Nya and I did the same, although my backpack held mostly first aid supplies and our tiny stash of emergency cash with only some food. We sorted through our supplies and rationed out some food for each of us. Soon, we were chowing down.

A few minutes later, I leaned back against a boulder, groaning, "Oh, I ate too fast. And maybe too much. Yeah, probably too much. Ugh."

"Ahhh, my stomach hurts," Jay moaned.

"First your stomach hurts because you didn't have anything to eat, now your stomach hurts because you got something to eat," Nya teased, but her voice was strained. She stretched out flat on the ground, pillowing her head on her arms and closing her eyes. "I suggest we take a little while longer on this break. Rest and digest, that kind of thing."

"I'll accept that suggestion," I mumbled.

"Awesome," Jay said, and he flopped over onto his side, eyes already closing.

Fidgeting against the boulder, I got comfortable. My own eyes started closing without me telling them to do so, but I let it happen. We'd rest for a bit, then we'd get up and be on our way towards Zane.


	15. Chapter 15

"We should throw all their favorite things in the trash," Kai complained, kicking at the floor for emphasis. "All of them. Jay's inventor stuff, Nya's inventor stuff… Does Lloyd have any inventor stuff that we could throw out? No, but he's probably got something we could get rid of. That'd teach them to leave us behind."

"No, that'd just teach them that we can't even handle being left behind, much less handle going on a rescue mission," Cole sighed, resting his chin in his hands.

Kai growled, but he could kind of get what Cole meant. That didn't mean he had to like it, though. "I just- I just don't believe it. They left us behind! While they went to go save Zane! They left us behind when Zane's our brother too!"

"And we have to just sit here and wait, not knowing how it's going, not knowing anything at all," Cole added.

"Not having a clue," Kai agreed. He flopped back on the couch where Cole was sitting and was quiet for a moment.

The whole house was quiet too. Normally all of them would be together, talking, laughing, messing around, playing games, doing all sorts of things. Normally Jay would be making jokes, Nya would be tinkering with something, Lloyd would be figuring out the schedule for the next couple of days, and Zane would be humming a little to himself as he read a book. Now, though, it was just Kai and Cole, waiting in the quiet.

Kai listened to the silence, the lack of Jay and Nya and Lloyd and most of all Zane, and found himself growing more and more angry. He and Cole had been left out.

"This sucks!" Kai finally burst out.

Cole laughed hollowly. "Wow, you just realized that? Hours after they're gone, you finally realize that they shouldn't have gone without us? Congratulations, you have some basic thinking abilities."

"No, really," Kai said angrily. "Listen. This sucks a whole lot. Lloyd made us stay because he doesn't think we're good enough fliers or fighters."

"Even though I'm way stronger than he is," Cole mumbled.

"And even though I can- no, that's not that point," Kai cut himself off. "The point is, he didn't think we're good enough to face the whitecoats and all the Serpentine at the School. But maybe not all the Serpentine are there."

Cole frowned for a moment before nodding slowly. "Maybe some are still around here."

"Exactly. They saw all of us, they fought all of us, but they only got Zane," Kai stated, ignoring the way his own voice quivered over their little brother's name. "They might come back. They might have even left some of their buddies here to look for us."

"They might have," Cole agreed. "They found us out in the open before, of course, so they might have a harder time finding us at home, but they've got a helicopter, they can search from the skies almost as easily as we can."

"Almost as easily as we can," Kai repeated thoughtfully.

"Yeah, that's what I just said," Cole stated.

"No, I mean, they're searching for us. Why don't we search for them? We don't have to just wait around for news from the others or for the Serpentine to attack us. We can be, uh, what's the word?" Kai asked.

"Uh, planners? Thinkers and doers? Helpful? Proactive?" Cole tried.

"All of the above," Kai decided. "We don't have to be useless, even if Lloyd thinks we are."

"Okay, yeah," Cole agreed. "Lloyd didn't even think of the fact that the Serpentine might still be around."

Kai grinned, rubbing his hand together. "But we did. We can keep our home safe for when everybody gets back. We can make traps, create bombs, cause fires even! Whatever it takes!"

"Bombs are a good idea," Cole stated. "Remember the one Jay and Nya drew up the plans for last fall, the one you and I put together? It almost caused an earthquake. It was great."

"Yeah, yeah. That was so we could make a better trail to get around those rocks. Okay, so there was a purpose for it, which made Lloyd approve of it. Now, we've got a purpose too," Kai said.

"Defend ourselves and our home from the Serpentine," Cole continued. "It's a pretty good reason, if I do say so myself."

"I say so too," Kai agreed. "Okay. So we've got a plan."

"Step one, make firebombs," Cole stated.

"Step two, absolutely destroy the Serpentine if they come back for us," Kai added.

"Step three, live happily ever after," Cole joked.

Kai shook his head. "No. Step three, rub it in Lloyd and Nya and Jay's faces when they come back with Zane, because we were awesome when they didn't think we could be, and then we'll all celebrate because Zane got rescued and you and me got to kick Serpentine butt."

"We got this," Cole stated confidently.

Kai grinned. "We got this."


	16. Chapter 16

Zane was close to breaking.

His feet ached, his legs throbbed, and his lungs burned from running for so long on the modified treadmill. To make matters worse, one of the whitecoats standing nearby, a man who thought of himself as Neil, held a strange device that looked like a remote control but with a long, thin stick-like part sticking out of one end. Every time Zane tried to stop running, Neil jabbed the device's stick at him and sent a shock through Zane's whole body. The shocks didn't leave visible marks, but they left a painful tingling in the spots where the stick had made contact.

As if the physical pain was not bad enough, Zane's emotions were going haywire. His mind automatically filtered through the thoughts and feelings of everyone around him. He sensed their eagerness, their interest, their excitement at testing him, at hurting him, at breaking him down. This was especially true of Neil, whose mind practically screamed with glee every time Zane tried to stop running and Neil got to shock him.

Neil could shock him as much as his cruel mind wanted, because Zane couldn't keep running any longer.

Zane's vision blurred, the front of the treadmill wavering in and out before everything went black. He fell, getting all tangled in the wires that were monitoring his every function, but that didn't matter. The shock from Neil's strange device hit him, then hit him again, then again, but that didn't matter either. Zane was down and out for the count.

His mind provided hazy images as he lay there, half-remembered happenings, partial dreams. He saw his family crowded around him, but he knew they weren't there. Zane was alone.

No, not alone. Worse than alone. Just like those two poor caged kids, Zane had the whitecoats for company.

A harsh pain, a tugging at his skin, a murmuring of voices and minds around him, all of it brought Zane back to his uncaring reality. He blinked up at the ceiling, squinting against the brightness of the light. Hands were removing the electrodes that had attached the monitoring wires to him, pulling quickly and sharply without a thought for how much that hurt.

"It went for so long," Neil's voice marveled, or maybe it was his thoughts. Zane couldn't tell. There were too many thoughts, there was too much going on for him to focus. "Incredible! We knew it would be good at this, but I didn't think it would be this good."

It. They thought of him as an it. Zane wanted to throw up.

"I'm still in shock that we get to study this subject," a different person maybe said, maybe thought. "I've been wanting to dissect the apparatus for as long as I've known about it. Maybe I'll get a chance to run some tests of my own. I hope so, I want to measure its intelligence."

Zane could feel how they thought about him, how they liked the things that made him different. That wasn't in a nice way, in the way Cole and Lloyd and Nya and Kai and Jay liked Zane. That was a distant way, a mean way, a way that made Zane into an experiment and a piece of equipment, not a person. That was the way that made Zane an it, not a he.

Someone either thinking or talking about "its uncanny likeness to humans" slipped a straw into Zane's mouth. It might be water, or it might be some kind of chemical. Zane didn't care. He sucked it down, swallowing over and over. It at least tasted like water, so that much was good.

Another whitecoat picked Zane up, thinking excitedly about the tests she was going to run. Zane lay limply in the whitecoat's arms, letting her take him away.

Wait. Zane shouldn't just let them do what they wanted. He should fight. He should run. He should escape. He would escape. He just couldn't right then. He was too tired and too overwhelmed. Too many minds were thinking too many things, crowding in on his own mind. There was too much exhaustion, too much pain.

The whitecoat carrying Zane placed him inside his dog crate and closed the door behind him. Zane curled up slightly on the floor of the cage, too tired to do anything else. He would rest for a while, then he'd make a plan to get out of there.

Slowly, he blinked, staring out at the world beyond the crate. He saw the furry doggish boy staring back at him. The other boy was gone, had been taken away that morning and hadn't come back, possibly would never come back.

That wouldn't be what would happen to Zane. Zane would fight. Zane would run. Zane would escape. Just as soon as he rested.


	17. Chapter 17

Why was my pillow so hard?

Come to think of it, why was I sleeping half sitting up?

Groggily, I tried to lever myself into lying down, but something hard and cool pressing up against me from behind kept me from doing so. I tried to fluff up my pillow, but my hand just slipped right along its rough surface.

What was going on?

At a loss, I opened my eyes and peered around me. I was in a clearing in a forest. Jay and Nya were with me, but nobody else. The sky above me was dark and just beginning to lighten with the first rays of dawn.

Huh?

Memories came rushing back to me: going to pick strawberries, the Serpentine attacking, losing Zane, going on a mission to get him back, taking a break. Apparently our break had taken much longer than anticipated. That was more than a little worrisome. We didn't have the time to take long breaks. Or rather, more importantly, Zane didn't have the time.

Jumping to my feet, I rushed over to Nya, grabbing her by the arm and shaking her. "Wake up! C'mon, Nya, wake up!"

Her eyelids cracked open and she stared at me for a moment, then she brushed my hand off of her arm, rolled over onto her stomach, and closed her eyes again.

Oh no she didn't. I grabbed her arm again and began shaking harder. "Nya! This is important! You've got to wake up!"

"What's so important?" Nya muttered without opening her eyes.

"Uh, how about rescuing Zane?" I demanded.

Nya's eyes popped open and she sat up, looking around before locking eyes with me. "We slept."

"Yeah! Through the whole night!" I said frantically, leaving her and heading over to Jay, shaking him by the shoulder. "Jay, c'mon, Jay, wake up! Get up!"

"Mmm," Jay hummed tunelessly, swatting at my hand. "Go 'way."

"Get up!" I urged, shaking him by both shoulders now.

"Wha' is it?" Jay groaned.

"It's morning, that's what it is! The next day's morning!" I said.

Jay's eyes opened a bit and he peered around, eyes catching on the various trees and rocks surrounding us. "Huh. Why're we in a-"

"Because we're on our way to the School to get Zane back," I stated quickly. "Now get UP!"

"I'm getting, I'm getting," Jay grunted, sitting up. He yawned broadly, stretching. "Hngh. I'm getting up."

Satisfied for the moment that he was at least starting to be awake, I headed over to our backpacks, which Nya was already reloading with the food and supplies we'd taken out previously. Together, we made quick work of putting everything back in. I shrugged on my backpack, Nya put on hers, and I tossed Jay's at his feet.

"Let's go, let's go," I insisted when Jay took a moment to rub his eyes before putting his backpack on. "Come on, let's go!"

"I'm going!" Jay protested, slipping on his backpack.

We spread our wings, ran across the clearing, and were off into the sky. Normally, the fresh early morning air blowing against my face as I took off would've calmed me, but at the moment, I was too on edge. We'd wasted so much time. Who knew what had happened while we slept? Who knew what the whitecoats had done to Zane?

* * *

 **AN: Hope you're all enjoying reading this! I know I'm enjoying writing it. I'm also enjoying writing another Ninjago fanfiction, this one an AU of the movie, which I'll start publishing in the next few days. Keep an eye for "To Be the Son of Garmadon!"**


	18. Chapter 18

**AN: What's this? I'm updating two stories today? That's right! This one and "To Be the Son of Garmadon" are both getting an update! Hooray!**

* * *

Even given how much I was loathing myself for sleeping for so long, the thrill of flying made me cheer up a tiny bit, but only a tiny bit. I mean, come on! How awful could a leader of a rescue mission get? I had failed Zane terribly, and I couldn't stop beating myself up about it. My stomach dropped and my heart throbbed in my chest as I thought about how many awful things could have happened to Zane as we had slept.

Nya angled her wings to fly closer to me, noting as she did so, "We had to get some sleep."

I looked at her in confusion.

"Your eyebrows are furrowed and you're frowning. You're obviously worrying over how long we rested," Nya explained. "But we had to sleep."

"But we shouldn't have slept for so long," I bemoaned.

Nya smiled wryly. "Shouldn't we have? We've got a long ways to go still, and even with how long we slept, we'll have to stop and rest again at least one more time."

I sighed, unable to argue with her reasoning but still not liking it. I said as much. "I still don't like it. We shouldn't have rested for so long."

"We'll have to be well-rested for however we're going to rescue Zane," Nya pointed out.

"Yeah, but how are we going to rescue Zane?" Jay butted in, swooping close to us. "There's a ton of whitecoats, and a ton of Serpentine, and just three of us. The odds aren't exactly in our favor, you know? Could we get a tank or a really big truck somehow and just drive right in? Could we steal some of their guns? Oh, oh, maybe we could figure out when everyone goes home for the night, break in, get Zane, and break right back out again!"

That idea, as implausible as it was, seemed to make him happy, and he ranted on for a while about how we could accomplish it. I made encouraging noises and said nothing in particular about his plan. I didn't want to tell him that we had about as good of a shot at doing that as we did at, say, finding our parents. The thing was, we didn't have a good shot at most plans, really. But if it came right down to it, I had a hidden Plan B. That way, everyone would get to go free.

Well, everyone not including me.


	19. Chapter 19

Even with the pressure on to fly quickly and get to Zane, it was great to be in the air. We were basically alone up there, except for a couple of birds of prey who flew as high as we did, mostly eagles and falcons and that type of thing. They'd come swooping by every now and then, probably super confused by the strange-looking "birds" we were.

With as much altitude as we had, the landscape far beneath us looked like a mural. Strips of land in different hues of green and brown and sometimes gray slowly moved under us. Cars looked like nothing more than ants, and people walking around were barely even specks if I wasn't concentrating on them. One of the perks of being a birdkid was that raptor vision I had. If I focused on something far beneath me, it would sharpen and become clear to my eyes, whether it was a tree, a house, or anything else. I spent a lot of the time we flew doing that, picking things to concentrate on. Nya did the same thing, and every once in a while we commented on something we had seen.

Jay, on the other hand, spent the whole time talking. "Do you think Cole and Kai are doing okay? I know they were mad when we left. I hope they're not too angry still. I don't know what I do if we got back with Zane and Kai and Cole were still mad at us. Do you think they're all right? I hope they're all right."

"I'm sure they're all right," I spoke up when Jay took a pause to breathe. "They're probably still pretty upset, but they'll get over it. The important thing is that they're safe at home."

Jay bobbed his head in a nod, but he looked unconvinced. "I wonder if-"

As he babbled about what Kai and Cole might be doing at that moment, I tuned out for the most part, only paying enough attention to absorb the basics of what he was saying and nod when it seemed appropriate. I turned most of my attention back to looking at the ground, picking out object after object to focus on. A truck, a barn, a group of kids standing in a circle.

I wondered what those kids' lives were like. They looked to be about my age, but I bet that our lives were incredibly different. They probably had parents and teachers and family friends, and they probably had never fought a genetically-enhanced snake-man in their entire lives.

But why should I care about that? After all, they were stuck on the ground, stuck in the boring routine of school and homework and chores, never to know the glory of flight, never to know the freedom of not having adults around, whereas I got to fly where I wanted when I wanted and make my own rules. My life was so much better than their lives. I wasn't jealous. I was sure I wasn't jealous.

I refocused on the group of kids for a moment, about to turn my gaze and find something else to stare at, when something caught my attention. I frowned. The first time I'd looked, all I'd seen was a group of kids standing in a circle. Now when I looked, I saw that there was another kid, a kid who was a lot smaller than the other ones, standing in the middle of the circle, and this kid's looked tense and frightened.

Now, given my track record of a fight-filled life, it could be that I was just paranoid. It could be that I was seeing things that weren't there. I could be that I was completely wrong that there was something bad going on down there.

However, it could also be that I was right.

At that moment, I had a decision to make, one that could turn out in any number of ways, one that I could have spent forever agonizing over. But I didn't spend forever thinking about it. Instead, I just made up my mind.

I turned to Nya and Jay and opened my mouth.

"Not a chance," Nya said quickly, her sharp eyes focused firmly on my face.

I closed my mouth for a moment, frowned, then opened my mouth again.

"Nope, you're not doing that," Nya stated.

"Huh?" Jay asked, looking back and forth between us.

"Meet me at the southernmost point of the Caves of Despair," I told them.

"Wait, what?" Jay said. "Are we splitting up? Why are we splitting up?"

"Lloyd wants to go be a hero." Nya spat out the words like it was a bad thing.

Jay's nose wrinkled. "I don't get it."

I ignored his confusion. All I could think of was that the boy on the ground needed help, just like Zane needed our help, but for the boy on the ground, there was no one coming to help him.

"Oh, oh! Is this like the time we saw that fox hunting that rabbit, and we got in between them and scared the fox away, and we totally rescued the rabbit? Is this like that?" Jay asked.

"Close enough," I stated. "It'll be quick, I promise."

"You know what would be really quick? If we just kept flying," Nya stated.

I frowned at her. "It'll be quick enough. You two keep on flying, keep the course, and I'll catch up with you in like half an hour or something. If worst comes to worst, I'll meet you at the Caves of Despair."

Nya stared at me, then looked away pointedly. She hated this idea and I knew it.

But you can't please everybody all the time. I knew that too.

"All right then," I stated, starting to angle myself to fly toward the circle of kids. "I'll be right back."


	20. Chapter 20

Whenever Kai and Cole were working with explosives or anything that had a potential for mayhem, especially things that could cause fires or earthquakes, they were really good at it. Kai thought so at least, and given how well their plan was going, he thought he was correct.

Carefully hammering away at the smaller of their two contraptions, Kai asked thoughtfully, "Do you think we could make, like, some sort of hologram to hide the house?"

Cole laughed. "Kai, we just barely got the computer working well enough to get some schematics. You think we could make a hologram projector?"

"Guess not," Kai admitted.

"Take a break for a moment and come over here," Cole suggested, pulling his hands out from inside the stereo with a fistful of wires in his grasp. He separated one wire from the group and held it up as Kai approached. "What color is this wire?"

"That one's blue," Kai stated, peering at it.

"And this wire?" Cole asked, pulling out another one.

"That one's black," Kai said.

Cole nodded. "Okay, good. Just didn't want to get those two mixed up. We're ready for the next step, then."

Kai looked at the plans he and Cole had engineered from the various schematics they had downloaded and from the blueprints Jay and Nya had left behind. "Okay, good. Next we need something to keep track of time with. Could we take apart my alarm clock?"

"We could," Cole said slowly, a smile spreading across across his face. "But we could also do something even better."

"That looks like an evil grin," Kai noted. "I approve. What are you thinking?"

Cole's smile widened. "Go check Lloyd's nightstand and find out if he left his watch behind. The green one with the gold wings carved in it."

Kai cackled with glee and raced off.


	21. Chapter 21

Narrowly avoiding crashing into some cacti, I came to a landing around the side of a old, deserted-looking warehouse on the edge of some patchy woods. Shaking out my wings, I retracted them and folded them in tightly, hiding them beneath my hoodie. I tugged a bit at my clothes, adjusting them so they didn't look quite as windblown. Now I looked normal, or at least as normal as I could with my eye blackened and my cheeks scraped from the fight with the Serpentine. Oh well.

Heading around the corner of the warehouse but sticking close to the wall, I saw the three guys standing around the one guy I'd seen from the air. The three guys on the outside were my age or a little older, maybe around sixteen or seventeen. The one in the middle, however, was probably about nine to eleven. Instantly, I thought of Kai and Jay.

"I told you, you weren't supposed to tell anyone about my problem with Cyrus!" The tallest of the three older guys was yelling. "You shouldn't have gotten involved. He deserved it."

The boy stared at the guy incredulously. "He deserved to get beat up? He deserved to look like he got hit with a car? No way! What did he even do to you, Cryptor?"

"He said the wrong thing to the wrong person," the big guy said menacingly. "He got in my way, so he deserved it."

His two friends chuckled. Why did people have to be such jerks?

But these weren't just regular jerks, I saw, peering at them. They were armed jerks. A rather large gun was dangling from the hand of one of the two jerky friends. Yikes. That didn't bode well.

Nothing ever did bode well for me, though, so that didn't matter. What mattered was the fact that these jerks were picking on someone not their own size, someone who probably couldn't defend himself. It reminded me of all the times the whitecoats and the Serpentine had hurt me and my family. I wouldn't let anyone else get hurt like that.

Pushing off of the building, I strode toward the group. The boy in the middle saw me through a gap between two of the big jerks and his eyebrows shot up. Apparently that clued in the jerks, because they turned in unison to stare at me.

They examined me for a moment, but then they seemed to shrug mentally, like they were thinking that I was just some random guy passing through, and they turned back to the kid in the middle. They had taken their eyes off me, as if I wasn't a threat. That was their first strike.

"All right, now, Wu, I'm starting to get a little angry. In fact, I'm starting to think you deserve to get the same treatment I gave Cyrus," the biggest guy stated.

"Three against one, makes sense," I called out, making my way forward and coming to a stop right by the biggest guy. I was trying to stay calm, stay reasonable, stay clear-minded, but it was hard. What made these guys think they could threaten a kid like this?

"You better watch it, dude," the stockiest of the three tall guys, the one holding the shotgun, told me. "In fact, you better clear on out. You really don't want to be around for this."

"Actually, I really do want to be around for this," I said brightly, weaving around the tall guys to stand next to the kid named Wu. Wu stared at me quizzically, like he couldn't believe what I was doing. "Not only do I want to be around, I think I want to be a big part of it. In fact, I want to beat you up the way you've been threatening to do to this kid."

The three jerks laughed. That was their second strike.

Due to all the genetic engineering and whacked-out experimenting that had been done on me, I was incredibly strong, just like the rest of the flock. I was even stronger because of all the martial-arts training Jeb Garmadon had taught me and the others. I was good at fighting, even if before yesterday, I'd fought my family members for fun. No matter what these jerks threw at me, I could take it, but I'd need to get Wu out of there somehow.

Moving to stand in front of Wu, I put up my fists.

"Oh, you think you're funny," the biggest guy mocked. He turned to the thinner of the two other guys. "Grab Mr. Funny-Guy."

The thinner of the two other jerks moved forward. That was strike three. They were about to be out of here.

I moved with all of my unnatural, experiment-given speed, kicking high and firm right into the thin guy's chest. A cracking sound filled the air, like my kick had broken a rib or something, even though on Cole or Nya, that kick would've barely made them move. The guy staggered back, choking on his own breath and looking shocked out of his mind.

The other two guys ran at me at the same time. Spinning in place, I yanked the shotgun out of the stocky guy's hands. Gripping it by the barrel, I swung it like a baseball bat and smacked the side of the stocky guy's head with its handle. He fell to his knees, and I tossed the gun aside as I turned and punched the biggest guy in the stomach. The tall guy doubled over.

I took a moment to breathe, glancing over my shoulder at Wu, who still stood behind me. His eyes were wide and he looked scared, and I hoped it wasn't because of me.

"Get out of here!" I advised him. "Go! Run!"

"I can't just-" Wu began, but then the three jerks were standing and stalking toward me, and Wu high-tailed it out of there.

That's when I saw what I'd done wrong. I should've held onto the shotgun, because now the tallest guy had picked it up off the ground and was starting to level it toward me.

"You're about to regret that," he warned.

"Not a chance," I spat back. Then I turned and ran for the woods.


	22. Chapter 22

I wished I could've spread my wings and just flew for it. But no, I couldn't do that. If anyone, especially jerks like the bullying boys, saw my wings, I could only imagine the huge trouble I would be in. Most people didn't exactly like giant mutant weirdos like myself, to put it gently. So instead of taking off into the sky, I took off for the woods.

With my unnatural, experiment-given speed, it only took me a moment to make it into the woods, but as soon as I was in, I had to slow down. The scrubby underbrush made running difficult, and so did the numerous branches poking out into my path. I ran as best I could, but I had no clue whether it would be fast enough. I could only hope so. After all, the jerks behind me had to deal with the treacherous terrain too, and they didn't have the benefit of superhuman speed. I would be able to get away from them.

I shouldn't have tempted fate. As soon as I thought that I would be able to escape, a loud crack rang out and a tree beside me sprayed bark. The tree had been shot. Those jerks still had the gun.

As I tried to increase my speed as my fear levels rocketed, I realized this all felt way too familiar to me. It was like déjà vu, except I really had lived it before. Well, at least dreamed it before. What did it mean, living through something so like my dream? I'd have to ponder the philosophical implications later, once I was done running for my life.

That's when another crack filled the air, and at nearly the same time, pure pain radiated through my left shoulder. Jerking my head back and to the side, I saw blood already beginning to soak through my hoodie. One of the jerks had actually managed to get me with the gun!

Distracted by the pain and the anger, I didn't look closely enough at where I was going. My foot caught on a raised tree root and I tripped, slipped, slid and scraped my way along the ground, right over the edge of a ravine. I grabbed for a branch, a root, a large rock, anything to stop my fall, but my left hand wasn't doing anything I told it to and my right hand couldn't get a grip on anything.

After what felt like forever of falling but what was maybe three seconds total, I skidded to a stop at the bottom of the ravine. Heaving heavy breaths of pain, I looked up at the sky only to find there was no sky to be seen. Vines and branches and various overgrown bushes covered the top of the ravine, shielding the sky from me and, I realized a moment later, shielding me from the jerks. After all, my hoodie was the green of the plants and my pants were the gray of the rocks. I blended right in.

I held still, very very still, trying to calm my breathing, slow it down so it wouldn't give me away. From far away, I could hear the jerk boys screeching and shooting. The sounds got louder and closer, then quieter and farther, and then finally they faded out of existence. The bullies had run right past me and kept on going until I couldn't even hear them anymore. Okay, so that much was good.

Pretty much nothing else was good, though. I was all scraped up from my fall, not to mention the glaring fact that I'd literally been shot. I sat up slowly, trying to stretch my wings in preparation to take off and get out of there as fast as possible, but a stabbing wave of pain informed me that not only had my shoulder been hit but my wing had been hit too. The blood was still pouring out, and I awkwardly folded my wing back in and clamped my right hand over the wounds. To put the terrible cherry on top of the awful sundae, I recognized the plants I was sitting in as poison ivy. How lovely.

I stood as well as I could manage, grunting and moaning in pain. I began to walk through the ravine, finding a less-steep slope and beginning to climb it slowly. I had to get on my way somehow. Jay and Nya were waiting for me, likely worried and confused by how long I'd already been gone. Zane was waiting for me, if he was even still alive to wait. Oh, I was the worst.

I grimaced in pain and anger, not sure if I was most angry at the jerks of the world, the situation, or myself. I just always had to fight for the underdog. Jeb Garmadon had told me that would really get me in trouble one day.

Jeb Garmadon had probably had no idea how right he would be.


	23. Chapter 23

"My stomach hurts," Jay commented, breaking the silence that had fallen over him and Nya since Lloyd had left. Jay still wasn't full sure what had gone on or why Lloyd had left, but Jay was sure his stomach was growling and clenching in hunger, and that was enough to be sure of for the moment.

Nya nodded to him, then tilted her head to one side, indicating a large set of cliffs looking over a lake. She adjusted her wings, heading toward the cliffs, and Jay followed.

Nya led the way to what looked like nothing more than a shadow cast by the clouds, but what was revealed as they got closer to be some sort of cave. The two of them landed just inside the cave, and Jay stretched his wings gratefully as he finally was able to stop using them.

Looking back into the cave, Jay found that it was long but thin, just wide enough for the two of them to sit side by side with a little room in between them, so that was what they did. Jay took off his backpack carefully and began rummaging through it, pulling out a bag of dried fruit. "Do you want this?"

He looked up to see Nya holding out a chocolate bar. "Nya! Oh! Where did you get this? Were you hiding it? You had to have been hiding it, you kept so quiet but the whole time you had chocolate, I can't believe it, it's gonna taste so good!"

Nya smiled as Jay took the bar from her, pulling out another bar of chocolate for herself.

They dug in, devouring the chocolate bars, then the bag of dried fruit, and then quite a few crackers. Finally, however, Jay was satisfied.

Well, Jay's stomach was satisfied. His mind was the opposite of satisfied; it was racing all over the place. "Where did Lloyd go? What did he plan on doing? Aren't we supposed to meet him at the Caves of Despair? What are we going to do if he doesn't make it there to meet us? Why did he-"

Nya cut him off quickly. "Lloyd saw someone who needed help and went to give some help to them. We can wait here for him. This cave is one of the Caves of Despair. He'll be here, so don't worry."

Jay worried anyway. Weren't they supposed to be on their way to rescue Zane? Zane needed their help, after all, more than anyone else could need their help. What could Lloyd have been thinking? Discontent, Jay ate another few crackers. He glanced at Nya. She was sitting quietly, picking through her backpack, taking things out and organizing them. But Jay couldn't sit quietly; he was too worried. Getting up, he walked out to the edge of the cave, finding a ledge there and peering out to one side of the ledge.

Jay's jaw dropped. Uh-oh. "Nya? We might have a problem."


	24. Chapter 24

"Nya?" Jay called again nervously.

Walking out to stand beside Jay, Nya looked around. Jay could see the exact moment she saw what he had seen, because she froze in place.

The ledge they stood on was only one of many. The other ledges were sparsely populated with stunted underbrush, moderately populated with various rocks and boulders, and heavily, heavily populated with the biggest bird's nests Jay had ever seen. Lots of the nests contained fuzzy but large baby birds, and lots of the baby birds had even larger parents, and lots of the parents were looking directly at Jay and Nya with the cool eyes of predators glancing over their prey.

"What even are they?" Jay wondered quietly, trying to talk without moving his mouth so as not to startle the scary parent birds.

"Some kind of hawk, I think," Nya responded just as quietly, gingerly sitting down where she stood. "Don't make any unexpected or quick motions. Just sit down as slowly as you think you can."

Jay obeyed, easing himself down to the ground. His heart was beating an even more rapid pace than usual, and it was kind of hard to breathe. All he wanted to do was run back into the cave, but from the way the birds were eying him and from Nya's instructions, Jay figured if he ran, he'd be dead meat. All of the parent birds had talons and beaks that looked incredibly sharp, like they were just made for ripping into birdkid flesh.

"Are we going to-" Jay began.

Nya cut him off. "Don't talk yet."

Jay clamped his mouth shut. He watched the hawks. Some of the parent birds had bits of other animals in their beaks. He guessed they had been feeding their babies before he and Nya had startled them. After a few moments of silence and stillness, Jay was proven right when the parent birds turned back to their fledglings and started dropping bits of meat into the babies' mouths.

Watching the birds go about their business, Jay was kept busy for a minute or two, but only a minute or two. After that, it became boring pretty quickly. Jay wanted to fidget, wanted to chatter, wanted to know what was going to happen next. He slowly turned his head from side to side, trying to find something to look at to interest him.

That something turned out to be a bit of movement from Nya. At about the pace of a snail moving along a leaf, she was moving her wings out and unfolding them.

All of the hawks turned as one, zeroing in on Nya's wing as if it was the most important thing in the world.

"I want them to realize we're nothing to fear," Nya said under her breath. "Put out your wings. They need to know not to attack us."

A little confused but trusting Nya, Jay extended his wings.

After a few moments, the parent hawks turned back to their babies, no longer seeming to register Jay and Nya as threats. Once their eyes weren't lasered in on him and Nya, Jay found them kind of cool. They were huge birds, their wingspans a little over half the size of Jay's own, and they seemed to command the area around them. Their wings were mostly light brown on top with darker brown stripes on the top sides and little bits of white on the underneath sides. They reminded Jay fondly of Kai's wings, and as he watched the parents fly about, leaving to get food and returning to feed the food to their babies, Jay missed the rest of his family.

Still. Even though it was just him and Nya, it was kind of neat to be surrounded by so many birds. It was a little gross too, especially when one of the parent hawks brought back a snake that was still moving as the parent tossed it to the fledglings. Jay made a face as the fledglings swarmed the snake to devour it, and Nya looked over at him and grinned.

After a moment, Jay grinned back at her. This wasn't so bad. He wanted to leave, he wanted Lloyd to get there, and he wanted more to eat, but this wasn't so bad. It was almost cool in a way. It would be okay to just sit back and chill out for a few minutes more.


	25. Chapter 25

But Jay didn't want to sit back for that many minutes more.

"We need to help Zane," Jay blurted out a little while later. "He needs us. He's like a little brother to me."

Nya nodded in agreement. "To all of us."

Jay frowned, looking out over the hawks. "I haven't told you this before, not you or Lloyd or Cole, 'cause I thought you might get mad, but sometimes in our room, when we're supposed to be getting to sleep, I tell Zane jokes late into the night. He doesn't get most of them, but it's still good. Am I- am I going to have to sleep in Zane's and my room alone when we get home, whenever that happens?"

"No," Nya stated. "Lloyd will return. He'll come back to us, and we'll go get Zane back."

"Yeah. Lloyd'll come back," Jay repeated, trying to convince himself.

"Do you see those hawks up there?" Nya asked, changing the subject so rapidly that Jay whipped his head around to stare at her in confusion.

"Huh?" Jay asked.

Head tilted back, Nya pointed up at that sky. "See them? See that big one? It looks like he moves one wing more quickly than the other when he makes turns, and it looks like that helps him turn a lot more smoothly. That might work for us too."

Furrowing his eyebrows, Jay squinted up at the hawk Nya was pointing out. "Uh-huh, I see him."

Turning back to Nya, he opened his mouth to ask another question, but his lips had barely parted when Nya stood up, jogged to the cliff's edge, and leaped out into the sky. Spreading her wings, she swooped up toward the hawks.

Jay sighed, propping his chin up in one hand. He wished Lloyd was here so much it almost hurt. What was taking him so long? Was Lloyd injured, trapped, or something even worse? Did they need to go back for him?

Nya flew past the cliff at the same height as the cave Jay was tucked into, calling out, "Come on! You should try this. It makes flying so much easier."  
Sighing again, Jay stood and headed for the edge of the cliff. Why didn't Nya seem to be worried like he was? Jay guessed that she probably was worried, but just didn't want to show it. After all, Nya loved Zane. She was teaching him to cook and she was always careful to make sure he could keep up with the rest of them when they went flying despite Zane's comparatively small wingspan. So yeah, Nya must be worried. And since she was worried and still wanted to work on flying, Jay could be worried and work on flying too. It might be better than huddling in the cave and worrying until his head felt like it was going to explode.

Jay ran the last few steps to the edge of the cliff and jumped out, snapping out his wings as he went. Despite his worries, joy filled his whole body. Flying always lifted his spirits simultaneously as it lifted his body through the air.

He flew up to Nya, keeping pace with her, and she showed him how she did the move she had seen the hawks doing. Jay tried it out, and it worked really well. He flapped his wings, moving himself in large circles around the hawks, going closer to them and then farther away and then closer to them again. Now that the hawks saw the birdkids' wings, the birds didn't seem to mind them. Jay kept his focus on flying and away from Lloyd and Zane, and he was okay for the moment.

Later, a ways into the evening, Jay lay on his stomach on the cave ground and stared out at the hawks, his wings stretched out and resting. The parent birds were feeding their babies, grooming their babies, helping their babies practice flying. All in all, the older hawks were taking great care of the little hawks. It was very sweet and made Jay smile. It also kind of made Jay want to cry.

Sniffing quietly, Jay scrubbed at his eyes, trying not to let Nya notice.

She noticed anyway, of course. "What's wrong?"

"Just, the hawks," Jay said miserably, feeling like a loser for getting so sad over such a little thing. "The parents are being so good to the babies, like real moms and dads. I never had that. I mean, I had you, and Lloyd, and Cole, and even Jeb for a while. But it's not the same thing."

"I see what you're saying." Nya sounded kind of choked up, like Jay did. She didn't look at Jay, but she extended a hand and ruffled his hair gently.

As the sun set, the hawks all cozied up in their nests, and even the loud baby hawks went quiet as it went dark. When there was barely enough light to see by, and even that light came from the moon, Nya scooted over to sit right next to Jay and held out her left hand closed up in a fist. Jay made a fist of his own left hand and put it on top of Nya's. Jay tapped Nya's left fist with his right fist, and Ny tapped Jay's left fist with her right fist. It was the flock's little bedtime ritual which they always did before going to sleep.

But they hadn't done it when they fell asleep in that forest clearing. They'd forgotten completely. And now there were only two of them left to do it. It didn't feel the same without a whole stack of fists to tap.

Jay pulled back from Nya, curling up against the wall of the cave. Tears were rising to his eyes again, and he hated it. Jay barely managed to force himself to say, "Good night."

"Good night," Nya said back.

Jay covered his face with his hands and squeezed his eyes shut, hoping that when morning came, things would look brighter.


	26. Chapter 26

To put things lightly, this day was turning out not great for me. Even though I had been putting pressure on my shoulder for what had to have been hours, a hot trickle of blood still made its way out of my shoulder every time I moved it the slightest bit. Having felt around as best I could, I figured the bullet had made a large gape in my shoulder and wing, but hadn't gotten stuck. That was pretty much the only positive to this whole situation.

It had been since I fell into the ravine that I had seen the bully boys with the bullets, but every now and then I'd heard them in the distance and had to hunker down and hide just in case. Then the sounds would die off and I would start on my cold, miserable way once more. I had hiked through the forest in a large, curved trail in an attempt to make my path extremely confusing in case one of the gun-toting jerks stumbled across it, splashing through at least four streams because I had thought I had heard dogs barking at one part. If the bully boys had brought dogs, then I needed to cover my scent, and walking through a little river was the best way to cover my scent. It was also the best way to make me absolutely wet, freezing, and ticked off at the world and at myself.

The sky was dark, the sun halfway through setting and the clouds covering any light that was left. Hours had passed, way more time than I had planned on. Jay and Nya had to be freaking out. I felt bad for them, but I felt far worse for Zane, whose rescue had been put on hold because I had just had to go stand up for the little guy. Oh, Zane, I'm so sorry.

Everything about this was awful, and I had no one to blame but myself. Well, and the jerks with the gun, but mostly myself, which only made it more awful.

As if things couldn't get any worse, the clouds covering the sky began pouring down rain. What an absolute joy. Now I was injured, wet, cold, and only getting more and more wet and cold. At least I couldn't get any more injured. Immediately after thinking that, my shoulder throbbed in pain and trickled out a little more blood. Actually, I wouldn't bet on not being able to get any more injured.

I hadn't heard so much as a shout from the bully boys in a while. Clueless as they were, they had apparently had enough sense to get out of the rain and go home. If only I could do the same.

Musing on the futility of my situation, my eyes caught on a light up ahead. Maybe a closed store, or some half-abandoned shed where I could take shelter for the night? I could only hope. Squinting, I made my way closer and closer.

It wasn't a store or a shed. It was a house, and all the lights were on inside and out, so it was obviously occupied. Just my luck.

Dejected, I was about to turn away when a person passed by on the inside of one of the windows. I recognized him: the kid I had helped, Wu.

So this was where he had run off to when I told him to skedaddle. At least he had gotten home safe when if I couldn't. Even with everything that had happened, I was still glad I had helped him and kept him from getting beaten up.

I was shivering, thinking hard of what plan I could come up with and coming up with nothing, when the house's back door opened and out stepped Wu, wearing a raincoat and a big floppy hat. Something scurried past him, a big, wolfish-looking dog. It hurried from the steps to the yard, stopped, then began leisurely walking around, sniffing here, sniffing there, sniffing all around.

"Hurry it up, now, Jasmine," Wu chided the dog. "We don't want the house to smell like wet dog all night, do we?"

He was facing slightly away from me, watching the dog. From his profile, I could see rain dripping from his hat to the ground. He stayed dry. I, on the other hand, was wetter than I possibly had ever been. Hmmm...

I hesitated. Was I really thinking what I thought I was thinking? Evidently yes, if I could think it like that. Sighing, I shook my head at myself. What was wrong with me? How could I even think of doing this? But there was nothing else to do. I had no choice.

Stepping forward, I moved toward Wu.


	27. Chapter 27

\- All right, if we get two more samples of its "blood" then we should have enough to finish those arrays. -

The sounds of thinking jolted Zane out of his own thoughts, and he pressed himself against the back of his dog crate. Why wasn't this over yet? Why hadn't he been rescued? Weren't the others coming for him?

Footsteps approached the crate Zane was huddled in, and moments later, the door to the dog crate opened. An old-looking man in a white lab coat crouched over and looked in at Zane. Zane covered his face with his hands and stifled a whimper.

The whitecoat snuck a hand into the crate and pulled Zane's left hand, the one with a shunt in it, away from his face, but then the whitecoat stared at Zane's face for a second before scowling and letting Zane's hand go. The man straightened and turned back to the other two whitecoats who had followed him, snapping, "Which one of you idiots did this?"

"It bit Reilly," one of the other whitecoats offered nervously. "So he smacked it."

Zane wanted to shrink, wanted to disappear, wanted to be anywhere but here. His whole face hurt, and his left cheek especially burned. He didn't regret it though. He hated the whitecoats so much he couldn't contain it.

\- Reilly! What an awful excuse for a scientist. He's not fit to work at the School. If he messes with my specimen again… -

"What's wrong with him?" The whitecoat stated, crouching again to peer in at Zane once more. "And to do that to Subject Binary of all our subjects. It's unique, something we may never make again. And we'd lost it for so long, and now we finally have it back. Paul, tell Reilly not to damage the merchandise."

"Yes, sir," the second of the two other whitecoats piped up.

The old whitecoat snaked a hand back into the dog crate, going for Zane's own hand.

Zane didn't know what to do. He wanted to fight back. But he ached so much. His face hurt, his hand with the shunt hurt, and his stomach hurt. He'd barely eaten or even drank all day, and they'd been working him so hard, making him do all sorts of exercises. Then they had tried to take his blood, but he'd gotten fed up and bit that Reilly guy and gotten hit and gotten a shunt put in his hand. Now they'd drawn his blood at least three times, and he was getting dizzy even sitting all curled up in the dog crate.

Zane wanted to cry, but he forced back the tears. He would be brave, wouldn't let the whitecoats see any weakness. He would cooperate, gain their trust. Then he would... What would Jay say? Oh, yes. He would blow this Popsicle stand.

Gingerly, Zane uncurled and scooted closer to the front of the crate, allowing the whitecoat to take his hand.

"There you go," the whitecoat soothed. "Good job. There won't be any pain. It'll be okay."

Still stifling tears, Zane turned away from the whitecoat as best he could while still allowing the man access to the shunt.

The man had told the truth. There wasn't any pain from this blood draw. Perhaps this whitecoat was nice, like Jeb Garmadon had been.

And perhaps normal humans could fly, Zane thought scathingly, shaking his head. No. He couldn't let his guard down. He would pretend to trust the whitecoats so he could better prepare for escape, but he couldn't let his guard down. He needed to escape.


	28. Chapter 28

"All right," Cole stated, rubbing his hands together. "Let's run down the list. We've got Big Boy."

"Check," Kai agreed, looking to the table where their homemade bomb sat.

"We've got the jar of nails," Cole said.

Kai shook the jar up and down to make a satisfyingly loud series of clinking noises. "Check."

"We've got the tarp, and all the cooking oil, and the wires," Cole listed off.

"Check, check, all checked off," Kai said, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Ooo, taking down the Serpentine is gonna be so cool. We rock. I just wish we could've dug a pit. Oh, and put poisoned spikes at the bottom!"

"Where would we have found poison for the spikes?" Cole asked, then he said quickly before Kai could say anything, "It doesn't matter. We didn't have time. We'll make do with what we've got. We just have to fly carefully and figure out where the Serpentine."

"Then we can put the nails on the roads and put out the tarp, the oils, and the trip wires," Kai agreed. He smirked. "All we have to do is not get caught."

"That would be bad," Cole stated.

Kai laughed.

"Is it night now? Or is it at least close?" Cole asked, switching topics.

"Uh-huh. It's close. Here, I found some of your darkest clothes," Kai explained, holding out a bundled bunch of clothes. Cole held out his hands and Kai dropped the bundle into them, adding, "I've got my darkest clothes too. Once we get changed, are we heading out?"

"Yup, so let's go do that," Cole affirmed.

The two of them got changed and began packing up their supplies into bags.

"We should take Big Boy," Kai said, packing the jar of nails into his bag.

Cole made a hesitant sound. "I don't know about that. We aren't supposed to actually run into any Serpentine, we're just setting out the traps. We don't need any explosives."

"But just in case we do run into some Serpentine, we should make sure we can fight them off. So we should take Big Boy," Kai suggested.

Cole thought about that. "Well, I guess it wouldn't hurt. After all, it won't go off until I set the timer. We could bring it."

"Yeah! Let's bring it!" Kai enthused, watching Cole pick up the bomb and tuck it away into his backpack.

They both picked up their bags and settled the bags against their bodies, then headed for the hall window overlooking the canyon.

Kai opened the window all the way, then clambered up to sit on the ledge, his legs dangling over the drop into the canyon. He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. He was both extremely thrilled and somewhat anxious, making it hard to concentrate. But he needed to stay focused. This was for Zane. This was to protect his family who he loved.

Taking another deep breath, Kai jumped out into space, snapping open his wings and soaring up out of the canyon. As always, flying made everything better, made the whole world seem brighter. Rising into the sky, Kai didn't feel like a mutant on a dangerous mission against freaks who would stop at nothing to capture or destroy him. Instead, Kai felt like everything was perfectly in place.


	29. Chapter 29

"You're Wu, right?"

The kid whirled around, taking several steps back as he did so.

"Hi," I said, feeling like an idiot, and then feeling even more like an idiot when Wu's frightened face made me realize I was still in the shadows of the trees. I bet he could barely see me. I walked forward, one hand held out to my side slightly in an attempt to look non-threatening, the other hand still clamped over my wound. "Remember me?"

Really, Lloyd? "Remember me?" How awkward could I get? I scolded myself, but in the next moment, Wu's face relaxed partially and he even managed a small smile.

"You're the guy who helped me," Wu realized. "Thank you! I don't know what I would've done. Tried to fight back and fail, probably. Hey, are you okay? They didn't get any hard punches in on you or anything? You're okay, right?"

"I'm okay," I said automatically, then I winced as a wave of pain went throbbing through my shoulder. "Well, uh. Actually, not entirely okay. I might… Need some help?"

Wu's eyes went wide. "Oh! Did you get punched in the face and get a bloody nose or something? Do you need a tissue?"

I'd need a bit more than a tissue, I thought wryly. I said, "Well, it turns out my dodging skills need a little work. They somehow managed to shoot me."

"They SHOT you?!" Wu exclaimed. "Oh, oh, oh no! Of course you're not okay then! We need to get you out of the rain! C'mon, you should come inside!"

He began herding the dog toward the door, which he opened for me once he made it there. Light streamed out of the house, which looked incredibly inviting.

But you know what? Not inviting enough to keep me from hesitating. I was down to the wire here, at the moment of decision. Out here in the backyard, I could still run and fight and hide. If I stepped into that house, the difficulty of running, fighting, and hiding would shoot way up. As caused by, you know, being stuck in a literal cage for hours a day when I was little, I hated feeling trapped.

However, I hated feeling useless even more, and right now, soaked and wounded, freezing and starving, I was more useless than I had ever been. I would just have to deal with it and hopefully get a little help out of the deal.

"Come on," Wu called, eyebrows furrowed with concern. "You'll feel better if you get out of the rain, and you'll feel even more better if-"

"Are your parents around?" I asked, cutting him off. The less people who knew about me, the better.

"My mom is. It's just the two of us. But my mom can help, I bet," Wu said earnestly, waving me forward.

Hesitantly, I began walking toward the door, my hand still pressing down on the path the gunshot had made in me.

As I came into the light, Wu squinted at me, then his eyes blew wide. "That's- that's a lot of blood. Oh man!"

He whirled on his heel again and sprinted into the house, leaving the door wide open behind him as he called, "Mom! Mom! Help! We need help quick!"

My brain felt like it was fighting to work but wrapped in layers of cotton slowing it down, which was probably partially my fear and partially the blood loss. Get help or get going? Get help or get going? Get help or get going? Could I get help?


	30. Chapter 30

Kai stood up and clapped his hands together, grinning down at his handiwork. "Okay, test it now."

Reaching out a hand, Cole gently plucked the wire. "Yeah, that should do it. It'll hold."

"It'll hold right up until the Serpentine's truck hits it," Kai said brightly.

Cole laughed a little. "Right on. Ready to head home?"

"I think so. We've got everything in place, right?" Kai asked.

"Right. The trip wire's set up, the nails are set up, even the oil-covered tarp's set up," Cole agreed. "We didn't get to use the bomb, but it's good to save it for an emergency. So yeah, I think this is a great set-up. We can head home."

They took off, banking west-southwest. As they flew in contented silence, Kai reviewed the set-up in his head, holding his chin high. It was true, they had a great set-up. Lloyd, Nya, and Jay wouldn't have been able to do any better, he'd bet.

...Well, they probably could be better, actually. But that was because Lloyd had a mind for strategy and Nya and Jay were geeks about engineering and stuff. So really, it was even more impressive Kai and Cole had done all they had, because neither of them was really that into this kind of thing. Lloyd, Nya, Jay, and Zane would be proud when they got back.

Kai hoped they got back soon. There had to have been enough time to rescue Zane by now. Kai was almost sure of it. He made himself be almost sure of it, because otherwise the images that invaded his brain were too much: Zane running from Serpentine, Zane cringing away from needles, Zane unconscious on a lab table as whitecoats loomed over him with terrible tools in hand.

Shaking his head hard, Kai forced his brain onto better thoughts, thoughts of Zane being rescued, thoughts of the others returning home, thoughts of all of them being together again. Happier now, Kai headed home.


	31. Chapter 31

As I reached the door, a gray-haired woman appeared at the end of the hallway.

Wu, who had been racing down the hall, skidded to a stop. "Mom!"

"Yes?" The woman answered, peering down the hall toward me quizzically, then toward Wu. "What's going on? Wu, who's this?"

"There's something I haven't told you," Wu told her seriously. "This is, uh-"

"Lloyd," I supplied, because I'm an idiot who didn't think to give a fake name.

"Lloyd," Wu repeated, nodding. "See, Cryptor and his gang cornered me today, but this guy helped me get away from them. He saved me. But they shot him!"

The woman's hand flew up to cover her mouth and her eyes popped. "Oh no! Come in, come in! Who can we call for you? Your parents, the police, some kind of-"

I winced as another throb of pain surged through my shoulder, and Wu's mom's whole face changed. Suddenly, she was calm and steady.

"Wu, take Lloyd to the bathroom," she ordered. "I'll get my things and be there with you in a moment."

I hesitated over the threshold, but Wu's worried face made me step in and follow him a little ways down the hallway to a small bathroom. Feeling dizzy from blood loss, I decided to sit on the edge of the tub before asking, "Uh, what kind of things is she getting?"

"Medical things," Wu explained, hovering over me awkwardly. "Mom's a veterinarian. She knows her stuff, and a lot of it works on people too."

A veterinarian, coming to work on a birdboy. How ironic. It was so funny, I found myself grinning, but that was probably also the blood loss. Sometimes it made everything seem goofy.

Wu's mom entered the bathroom holding a large first-aid box. "We should get you something to replace the fluids you've lost, Lloyd. Would juice be okay? It'd help your sugars too."

I shrugged and immediately regretted as a fresh wave of pain shot through me. Through gritted teeth, I mumbled, "Juice is fine."

"Wu? Could you get Lloyd some juice?" His mom asked.

Wu bobbed his head and practically ran out of the room.

"Something tells me you don't want me to call your parents," Wu's mom murmured, fishing through the first aid box.

I shook my head. Not like there were any parents to call, but she didn't know that. A lump was forming in my throat. She didn't know anything yet, but she was about to know everything.

"No police, either," Wu's mom guessed, pulling out a pair of scissors.

"Nope," I agreed. "Don't think they need to know. It probably just grazed me."

"We'll see. May I cut your hoodie so I can get a good look?" She asked.

I nodded, and she began cutting away, gently tugging at the fabric so it pulled away from my injury. Soon the hoodie was off and I was left in just my sleeveless shirt. I felt cold, and not just from being wet and hoodie-less. Any second now…

"It's messy, but it doesn't seem too deep, it just-" Wu's mom began, then her voice trailed off. She frowned. "Huh."

Here it came.

Wu came back into the room, holding out a glass of juice. I snatched it from him and gulped it down, fortifying myself for what was about to happen.

"What in the world-" Wu's mom muttered, moving slightly to peer around my shoulder. I knew exactly what she was seeing, what nobody else except the whitecoats, the Serpentine, and the Flock had seen.

Wu's mom pulled back. Her mouth was set in a frown, but her eyes were wide and concerned. "Lloyd. What is that?"

For a moment, I didn't say anything. I thought through how I'd gotten to the bathroom, how easy it would be to get out of the bathroom, out of the house, out of these people's reach. Out of any chance of getting help.

"That's a wing," I offered, then clarified as Wu frowned, "That's my wing. I think the bullet didn't just get my shoulder, but my wing too."

Gripping the edge of the bathtub tightly, I unfurled my wing slightly so they could see better. Even out of the corner of my eye, I could see the dark red-brown patch of blood spreading across my wing. Yup. Definitely hit.

Wu's jaw dropped, and his mom's eyes got even wider.

"How-" Wu started, then his voice died. He cleared his throat and tried again. "What- I mean, is it- why-"

Wu's mom leaned in again, looking around my shoulder. Putting her hands on either side of where the bullet had struck my wing, she carefully extended it the smallest bit.

I gulped but let her.  
"I see. Yes, your wing certainly took some of the damage," Wu's mom murmured. "The shot may have even hit the bone."

Letting go of my wing, she leaned back, eyeing me thoughtfully.

I was only able to meet her gaze for a moment before I had to drop my head to look at my toes. Oh, Nya and Cole were going to be furious, and rightly so.

Wu's mom placed a finger under my chin and gently tilted my head back up to look at her. Softly, she said, "It'll be okay."

"Okay," I managed to whisper back.

"First, we'll need to get everything cleaned up. Then we'll need to staunch the bleeding," she said, taking on a more brisk tone of voice. "Are you up to date on your tetanus shots?"

I blinked at her. "Um. I know what they are? I've never had one though, I don't think."

Wu's mom quirked her mouth in a half-smile. "Well, we'll need to do that too. Let's get to work."


	32. Chapter 32

Kai clutched the branch of the tree with all of his might. His knuckles were starting to ache from holding on so tight, but he couldn't make himself let go or even loosen his grip given his excitement and nervousness.

"Are they coming?" Cole asked for probably the tenth time from his spot on the tree branch just below Kai's.

"Not yet," Kai told him. "It's still early in the morning. Maybe they're having breakfast?"

Cole snorted. "Yeah, their start-of-the-day meal of pure condensed evil with a side of mice."

Kai laughed too, but he quieted quickly and went back to watching the road. Flying around, they had found the Serpentine's camp just a little ways from where the helicopter had landed, right where they'd thought it would be. Kai and Cole had spied on them for a little while, hidden in the trees, and figured out that the Serpentine didn't seem to be in any hurry to leave. If anything, they seemed determined to stay. That could only mean they were trying to find the other birdkids. Zane must have been the top priority for some reason or another, but it was clear the Serpentine still had something in mind to do with the rest of the Flock.

Maybe the Serpentine wanted to get them and bring them back to the School. Maybe the Serpentine wanted to get them and end them. To Kai, the Serpentine's intentions weren't really what mattered. Whether the Flock were meant to be kidnapped or killed, Kai didn't want it to happen. He wanted to stop the Serpentine from following the whitecoats' awful orders, no matter what they were. After all, they hadn't been able to stop the Serpentine before, and that had gotten Zane taken away.

Kai swallowed hard at the thought of Zane, allowing himself only a moment to feel bad before refocusing on the current task. He and Cole were high in a pine tree, right above an ancient logging road where they had previously spread the tarp and covered it with oil. Now they were waiting, waiting, waiting…

"There!" Kai cried softly, gripping the tree branch even harder, which he hadn't thought would've even been possible. "There, there! They're coming!"

A large truck was speeding down the road. Kai couldn't see the occupants, but it was coming from the direction of the camp. Besides, nobody had driven these roads in years, decades, maybe centuries. That meant it was the Serpentine.

"They're coming this way, for sure?" Cole asked.

"Uh-huh. They just made the turn," Kai reported.

"How fast are they going?" Cole asked.

Kai squinted. "Uh… Fast. Really fast."

"Can you see the tarp?" Cole asked.

"Nope," Kai stated.

"Me neither."

Kai snorted with laughter, then gasped. "They're almost here! They can't stop in time. They're gonna hit it!"

"They're-" Cole began.

Before Cole could get another word out, though, the truck reached the tarp and Kai yelped, "Yes!"

For a moment, the truck simply kept going, and Kai's heart sunk. Then, without warning, the truck jerked to one side, tires screeching. It veered sharply one way, then a little way to the other, then back and forth over and over down the road, getting closer and closer to one side of the road. With one final jerk, the truck sped off the road and right into a huge tree trunk with an incredibly loud crash.

"What happened?" Cole demanded immediately.

"It hit it, it hit it!" Kai chanted.

"Well, yeah, I guessed as much. But what happened?" Cole repeated.

"It started down the tarp normally, then it started going back and forth from side to side, and then jerked way over to one side and hit a big tree!" Kai explained, vibrating with sheer glee.

"All right," Cole said in satisfaction. "Anybody getting out yet?"

"Uh, not yet," Kai stated, peering down. "Wait, yeah, here they come. They're getting out, but kind of slow and shaky."

"So they're not dead," Cole said, sounding disappointed.

"Not dead," Kai agreed. He didn't feel as disappointed as Cole sounded, mostly because even with how bad the Serpentine were, he didn't exactly want them dead.

Then again, the Serpentine wanted them dead or captured, and they'd already taken Zane. Was it okay to want bad things for them in return? Kai decided that it was okay to want them gone at the very least.

"Are they all together in one spot? Could we drop the bomb?" Cole asked.

Kai frowned. "No, they're spreading out."

"Hmm. Yeah, there's no way we'd get them all. Besides, we'd probably cause a pretty big fire if we dropped it in the trees," Cole speculated.

"Which would be super cool," Kai offered.

"But which could also destroy our home," Cole pointed out.

Kai nodded. "And which would definitely make Nya and Lloyd cranky. Plus we wouldn't have anywhere to live anymore."

"Yup. All right, we should figure out what to do next, as quick as we can. We shouldn't take the time to go all the way back home," Cole thought out loud.

Kai grinned. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"I think so. The old cabin?" Cole asked.

"The old cabin," Kai agreed.


	33. Chapter 33

Some time long ago, maybe even a hundred years, Kai wasn't sure, but long ago, there had been some sort of logging being done in the forest. It was obvious from the old and grown-over paths and from the patches of trees shorter than the other trees, but it was also obvious from a couple of cabins that sat scattered throughout the forest. Most of them were broken down to the point of missing their roofs and several or all of their walls, but one of the cabins, sheltered underneath a particularly large tree, was still intact. That was where Kai and Cole were now.

"It stinks in here," Cole commented as soon as he walked in behind Kai. "Was that you, Gasman?"

"Nah, it's just the way it is, remember?" Kai asked.

Cole paused. "Oh, yeah. Rot and all that."

"Rot and mouse poop and dead bugs," Kai agreed, settling himself on a patch of floor that seemed slightly cleaner than the rest. "So. What do we do now?"

"Well, the oil slick crash went over like we planned, but I don't think it actually had a permanent effect," Cole concluded. "You said none of the Serpentine died or were too hurt?"

"Yeah," Kai stated. "None that I could tell, at least."

"So we need to go bigger," Cole said. He swung his backpack off of his back and dug around in it, coming up with the package they were calling Big Boy. "I think it's time."

"Really? We're gonna do it?" Kai asked, feeling a little nauseous, although whether it was from excitement or apprehension, he didn't know.

"Uh-huh. We need to get rid of the Serpentine, to stop them from hurting us, to prevent them from kidnapping anyone else," Cole explained.

Kai's eyes narrowed. "Yeah. Yeah, we need to do that."

"We should bomb their camp," Cole decided. "Hopefully most of them will be there, and-"

Cole paused mid-sentence, clutching Big Boy close. He turned his head to one side, then the other. He frowned.

"What?" Kai wondered.

"Shhh," Cole advised quietly. "I heard something."

He'd heard something? Well, the cabin was pretty rickety, Kai figured. Surely it had just been some old board falling down, or maybe an animal of some kind-

Scritch, scritch, scritch. Something, or someone, was scratching at the front door.

Kai gulped. Raccoons sometimes scratched at things, right? So did squirrels and chipmunks, probably. Maybe. Hopefully.

"Oh, look at the little birdiesss, all caught in a net," someone crooned from behind the front door.

Jumping up, Kai spun to face the front door in horror. Through a crack in the frame, he could just barely see an eye surrounded by scales peering in at him and Cole.

Spinning back, Kai reported lowly, "One at the front door."

Cole frowned and whispered back. "One at the back door. I can hear him shifting."

Well. That sucked.

"Side window?" Kai suggested.

Cole nodded and reached out, settling a hand on Kai's shoulder.

Moving as one, Cole and Kai inched toward the side window, Kai staring at it all the while. Just a little closer, c'mon, just a little closer…

A face appeared in the window, grinning and showing off sharp fangs.

Kai squeaked and stopped short.

"What?" Cole breathed.

"Serpentine in the window," Kai whispered. "All our exits are blocked."

"Hey there, little onesss," the Serpentine at the window teased. "You wanna play?"

Kai's whole body tensed. He put up his fists and widened his stance. They couldn't run. They had to fight.


	34. Chapter 34

Jay opened his eyes to the sun glaring right at him through the cave opening. Sighing, he sat up, covering his eyes from the brightness. "Nya, did Lloyd get here yet?"

No response.

"Is Lloyd still on his way?" Jay asked instead.

No response.

Uncovering his eyes, Jay looked around.

Now, not only was there no response, there was no Nya. She was gone. Zane, Lloyd, now Nya, all gone. Gone!

Wide awake now, Jay began to panic. Where was she? Had Serpentine came and kidnapped her? Had she rolled too far in her sleep and rolled right out of the cave and off the edge of the cliff to her death? Had she just decided to stop waiting and try to rescue Zane on her own? There were too many options, none of them good.

Jay crawled to the edge of the cave and peered down warily. He didn't see a Serpentine encampment down there, and he didn't see Nya's broken body down there either. Looking back into the cave, he saw that her bag was still there, so she probably hadn't gone on alone.

Stumped, Jay flopped back and stared up at the sky. A group of hawks were circling, pinwheeling easily through the air. All of the hawks looked so powerful. Most of the hawks clustered together as they made tight turns. Some of the hawks swooped down now and then to feed their babies.

One of the hawks was Nya.

Jay almost wept with relief. Standing and narrowly avoiding banging his head on the cave ceiling at the last second by stooping over, he launched himself out of the cave and into the air. He spread his wings and began gliding up toward the hawks and Nya.

The hawks spread out as he approached, giving him considering looks, like they weren't sure if he was friend, foe, or food. Eventually they seemed to conclude he was a friend, because they let him join them in the sky.

Jay swooped over to Nya.

"Good morning," Nya said.

"I'm hungry," Jay said.

Nya smirked. "Okay. I found a town nearby. Let's go."

Tilting herself, she headed away, and Jay followed gratefully. Soon, they were soaring over a little highway, the sides of it spotted with various stores.

Nya pointed a finger down toward a fast food shop. "See them?"

Jay looked and saw a little dot of a person. They appeared to be chucking bags into a large Dumpster. "Yeah."

"They're getting rid of yesterday's food, I bet," Nya said.

Jay lit up. "Oh! So there'll be plenty to pick from for us!"

Jay and Nya waited several minutes for the person to go inside, then several more to make sure the person wasn't returning to the Dumpster, then together, they swooped down to land next to the Dumpster.

Nya opened the lid, peering in and announcing, "Jackpot. Want a burger?"

Jay grimaced. "Watching the hawks take apart those poor little animals made me lose my meat appetite. But that's a salad, there, and look, there's some pies! Myrtleberry, cobblerberry, even apple, perfect!"

Tucking their jackets into their pants, they packed away food between their shirts and their jackets in the area that created. Within five minutes, they were up and away again, beating their wings carefully so as not to jostle their precious cargo too much.

Food made everything better, made the world seem kinder, made situations brighter, Jay realized, licking his fingers after he finished eating. He leaned back against the cave wall and stared out the opening at the hawks still swooping around.

Nya swallowed the last bit of her hamburger (her sixth or seventh, Jay thought) and spoke. "I'm pretty sure how they move is how they communicate. How they tell each other where to go to get food or where to stay away from because of predators. I can't tell how yet, but I'm pretty sure. Maybe we could learn it while we wait."

"...How much longer do you think we'll have to wait?" Jay asked, because if he had to wait for Lloyd, then no way did he have enough patience left over to wait before asking Nya.

Nya tilted her head to one side, considering the question. "I don't know. Lloyd should've been here by now. Since he isn't, that means something stopped him. Something big."

Feeling queasy, Jay swallowed hard. Something big meant something bad. "Oh."

"We'll have to go back, circle around, try to find him," Nya continued. "Maybe we can find him, and maybe we can help him. Or maybe we just use up some time we would've spent waiting here. Either way it's a good idea."

She stood, walking to the edge of the cave before looking back and raising her eyebrows. "You coming?"

"Oh! Right now? Like, right now right now?" Jay blurted, jumping up. "Yeah! Of course! Let's go!"

Nya nodded once, turning back around. Then she was up and away, riding on the air currents back toward where they'd come from.

Jay ran at the edge of the cave and jumped out after her, yelling, "Geronimo!"

He didn't know what it meant, but it felt good.


	35. Chapter 35

The moment my eyes popped open, I started looking around frantically, taking stock of how I was feeling and where I was.

The "where I was" ended up being pretty simple. I was in a bed in a little bedroom decorated largely with pictures of dogs, dragons, and, for some reason, various tea pots and tea kettles. Wu's room, I remembered a second later, just a second too late for me not to panic. Okay, so now I was panicking a little bit. I was still with Wu and his mom. I was supposed to be with Nya and Jay, on our way to rescue Zane. Nya and Jay must be hating me by now. They'd have the right. No, Zane must be hating me by now. He'd definitely have the right.

I began to sit up, and a wave of pain crashed over me, making it hard to breathe. So that was the "how I was feeling." In short, I was in serious pain, an amount I hadn't felt in years, since we'd escaped the School.

Well, no. That wasn't quite true. I'd felt pain close to this once in the time since we'd left the School behind us. I'd been sparring with Cole and dislocated my shoulder. The pain had been an unwelcome companion as we ran into the house, trying desperately to figure out what to do with me. Jeb Garmadon had found us yelling at each other in my bedroom. He had talked us down, figured out what had happened, and put my shoulder right back in. Then he'd given us a smile and went to get us some cookies. It had been a typical "him" thing. He'd always taken such great care of us. It made it even harder to breathe, thinking of him, loving him, missing him.

That's when the door to the bedroom I was in started to open, and I tensed up, my hands gripping the sheets so tightly I wouldn't have been surprised to hear a ripping sound. All of my instincts told me to get away, and fast. I ignored them. After all, my instincts had gotten me into this mess, making me go down and save Wu. What good could my instincts be now?

Wu peeked into the room around the edge of the door. He grinned when he locked eyes with me and then turned his head to the side, speaking behind him. "Mom, he's up."

Wu's mom stepped forward, looking into the bedroom. "Oh, good. Good morning, Lloyd. Are you hungry? Ready for breakfast?"

"We've got lots of good stuff, cereal and eggs and tea, of course," Wu piped up.

His mom laughed. "Yes, of course. We'll be waiting in the kitchen."

They left the doorway and I slipped out of bed, looking down at myself. I was wearing the slightly-too-small golden t-shirt and gray shorts Wu had loaned me for pajamas last night. I looked up from my clothes (really, Wu's clothes), and my gaze fell on a little neatly-folded pile on a chair by the foot of the bed. There sat my sweatpants and socks from the day before, looking clean and fresh, along with a sleeveless shirt and a thick hoodie I didn't recognize. Stepping over, I picked up the hoodie. It was dark gray with green and white edging, and as I flipped it over, I saw that there were two long cuts in the back, perfect for my wings.

Wu and his mom were taking great care of me. Kind of like Jeb Garmadon used to do. For some reason, it was hard to breathe again.


	36. Chapter 36

Kai didn't know how long it would take to die at the hands of the Serpentine, but he did know, or at least was pretty sure, that it was going to hurt. A lot. Like, a lot, a lot.

Next to Kai, Cole was shifting in place. Almost inaudibly, Cole stated, "Up and away."

Up and away? Kai's jaw would've dropped if he wasn't so tensed up with fright. Cole couldn't really mean it, could he? Like, straight up?

A loud crunching noise sounded from Kai's side, and he jerked his head around to see the window and a little of the area around it disappearing into falling shards of glass and wood. A pair of Serpentine grinned through the new opening and began tearing the opening larger, ripping away the wall with their bare hands.

At almost the same time, the Serpentine at the front door pried the door open, poking his head into the cabin. He said almost conversationally, "I've got a little newsss for you. They only want one of you alive. Ssso we get to have sssome fun."

He laughed, and the Serpentine at the back door and the ones at the window joined in, a strangely pleasant sound that didn't fit the situation at all. That's when they started to change, turning more into the snake-men they really were, their faces lengthening out into snouts, their eyes going a strange reddish-purplish color, their teeth growing and growing and growing into fangs.

"Oh, sssilly little birdboysss," one of the window Serpentine said smoothly, breaking away the last of the wall and entering the cabin. "Didn't your parents teach you that you can run, but you can't hide? Oh wait, that's right. You never had parents."

The other Serpentine hissed their laughter, their hair shrinking and disappearing into their heads and their skin breaking out into scales.

"Let's do this." Cole murmured it so quietly, Kai wasn't fully sure he'd murmured it at all. Time felt like it was moving way too fast and achingly slow all at once, and it made Kai's head spin. But yeah, okay. He could do this.

"Little birdboysss, so weak and pathetic. Oh, and thisss one'sss blind to boot," the Serpentine who had come in through the front door stated, waving his hand at Cole, who managed to look disdained and completely above it all. Kai wouldn't have been surprised if Cole had yawned, he looked so bored with the Serpentine. It was a skill Kai would have to practice, if they got out of this alive.

"You should've ssstayed with the ssscientists," the Serpentine at the back door cackled, finally bursting through the door as he spoke. "Then they could've fixed you up right. They could've given to you just what they gave to me, and then maybe you wouldn't have been ssso foolish and ran away."

The back door Serpentine point one scaly finger at his face, specifically one eye where, to Kai's horror, there was no eye. Instead, a metal sphere moved around and around in his eye socket, showing off a small red circle set into the sphere. The Serpentine stopped moving the sphere and focused in on Kai's shirt sleeve.

Kai looked down to see a glow start to burn a hole in his sleeve, and he yelped in shock.

The Serpentine all laughed again.

"Ssso, miccce," the front door Serpentine began. "It can be your choiccce. Who leavesss with usss, and who ssstaysss and rotsss? Or do we get to pick?"

Their faces spread with toothy smirks, the Serpentine began circling them.

"On three," Cole breathed.

Kai's fists balled up at his sides.

"One."

Kai lowered his shoulders and bent his knees.

"Two."

Kai took a deep breath.

"Three!" Cole shouted.

Immediately, Kai and Cole jumped upward, letting out their wings, beating at the air. They sped upward toward the ceiling. The Serpentine jumped at them, but Kai and Cole were already breaking through the roof.

Kai's ragged shirt sleeve caught on the edge of one of the beams, pulling him back to stand on the roof. He tugged at it furiously, but when it wouldn't budge, he tugged harder and ripped right through it, flying up and away.

Above him, Cole was flapping furiously, gaining more and more altitude. "Kai! Come on, quick!"

Kai jumped off of the roof and into the sky, joining Cole in his upward motion. Just as Kai caught up with Cole, Cole reached a hand over his shoulder into his backpack and pulled something out, tossing it down at the cabin.

"Go, go, go!" Cole screeched, hauling feathers away with Kai right behind him.

Then… BOOM!

The two birdboys were thrown through the air by the force of the explosion. Kai regained control just in time to avoid being shot into a nearby tree and just in time to see a huge fireball rise from the cabin. Well, from where the cabin had been just a moment before, before Cole had tossed their homemade bomb at it. There was no longer a cabin there, just splintered bits of burning wood and raining pieces of ash.

It was horrible. It was beautiful. It was done.

"I can feel the heat," Cole said after a few moments. "That does it, right?"

"Yup," Kai said, feeling a little nauseous.

The four Serpentine were lying in the remains of the cabin. One of them was jerking around. The other three were completely still, just dark smears against what had once been the cabin floor. As Kai watched, the still-moving Serpentine slowed in his motions, then stopped completely.

"Yup," Kai said again. "That does it."

He felt all wrong deep down, like instead of exploding in the cabin, the bomb had exploded inside of him and mixed everything up. Then he remembered Zane, the smile Zane had given them all when they were going out to pick strawberries, the little tunes Zane hummed when he was coloring, the hugs Zane gave each of them every night.

Kai lifted his chin. He stared down at the remains of the Serpentine and muttered, "That was for Zane. That was for our brother. That was what you deserved."

As he started to turn to Cole, Kai's gaze went right past Cole and to the road that led to the remains of the cabin. A black truck was speeding along toward them, with a Serpentine poking his head and shoulders out the passenger window, already fully in his snake-man mode.

Kai gasped.

"All right, Kai," Cole said, knowing that whatever had made the boy gasp couldn't have been good. "We'd better get going."


	37. Chapter 37

A bell rang loudly, and Zane was shoved forward into the narrow corridor. His feet tangled with each other and he almost fell, only barely managing to catch himself by continuing to move forward. Then he ran, and oh, did he have to run. Otherwise, he'd be shocked with electricity until his eyes went blurry, and then he'd still have to run.

His feet hurt from slamming against the ground, his legs hurt from pumping, his very brain hurt from thinking so quickly and from the electric shocks. He'd been doing this for hours, Zane was sure of it, and the clock on the wall every time he exited the maze confirmed it. And yes, it was a maze, Zane was sure of that too. Every time the bell rang, he was pushed into the opening and the door was closed behind him, and then he had to race through the thin corridors, turning here and there, skidding around corners and hoping not to meet a dead end, until he finally stumbled out of the exit. He'd fall to the ground, panting, aching, wishing for reprieve, and he would get a reprieve, but only long enough for the whitecoats to make the maze in a new way with the entrance and the exit in new spots. Then he'd be pulled to the entrance, he'd be shoved in, and he'd have to run again.

And so Zane ran, his vision fuzzy with tears and the aftereffects of the latest shocks, until he found the blessed exit and ran out, falling to his knees.

The whitecoats talked and thought over Zane's head, discussing their latest results, discussing how to make the maze experiment more interesting, discussing whose turn it was to make the pattern for Zane to run in. Two of them were talking about if they could let a Serpentine run freely through the maze as a challenge for Zane, more like a challenger, really. One of them was thinking about if she could persuade some of the others to let her make the electric shocks more constant, even if Zane didn't stop running, so she could figure out what the effect would be on "the subject's pseudo-adrenaline levels." One of them was bored and wondering when he would get a coffee break next.

One of them was creating a new pattern for the next maze.

Zane perked up inwardly, although he couldn't pull together the energy to perk up on the outside. One of them was creating a new pattern for the next maze! And Zane could read his mind! Zane could figure out where to go, where the dead ends were, where the exit was! This time, he wouldn't get shocked at all. This time, he would surprise them.

Concentrating hard, Zane closed his eyes and focused on the whitecoat who was creating the meme. Zane searched the whitecoat's mind, looking for the image of the maze the man was creating. And there it was! Zane did his best to memorize what turns he'd have to take: an immediate right, then pass a left and take the next left, then straight down through the three options the corridor split into, and then and then and then, all the way to the exit.

Someone grabbed Zane by the arms and pulled him up, dragging him to the new entrance. Zane knew exactly where they were going and exactly what he was going to do when he got there. He was set in front of the door, which opened.

The bell rang, but Zane didn't wait to be shoved forward. Instead, he sprinted forward, taking an immediate right, then passing the next left and taking the left after that, then going straight as the maze split into three options, and so on, until he saw the exit. With a final burst of speed, Zane raced out through the exit and fell to the floor in a mix of exhaustion and exhilaration. He had done it, and he hadn't been shocked once.

Mouth open, eyes closed, Zane panted for air, but his heart was swelling with pride. Wait until the others found him and rescued him and heard about what a cool thing he'd done!

Thoughts and words pressed around him, pushing at him from the whitecoats' minds and mouths.

"Unbelievable."

"Like it already knew."

"Intuition."

"Reasoning and creativity."

"Preserve the experiment."

"Extract the data."

"Dissect the systems."

"Take it apart."

Then someone was laughing very nearby, the sound ringing clear like the bell that had signalled the beginning of a maze run, and then that same someone was saying, "Now, now, everyone. We can't dissect him right away, now can we? He has a purpose he needs to fulfill. And before he can do that, I want to talk to him."

The voice was somehow familiar, not recognizable exactly, but familiar. Like a voice Zane had heard before, long ago, somewhere far from here, somewhere safe and warm and home.

Opening his eyes, Zane squinted up. An older man was leaning over him, his slightly wrinkled face framed by graying hair and haloed by the glow of a light fixture above. Somehow, the man wasn't thinking anything at all, or at least Zane couldn't hear any of his thoughts. The man looked like… The man seemed so… The man was…

"Hello, Zane," Jeb Garmadon said. "It's been a while, hasn't it? I hope you missed me, because I certainly missed you."


End file.
